In Desperate Manner
by Stoplight Delight
Summary: He could not believe it had come to this. February, 1990: late in a hard and hungry winter, Remus Lupin has come to the end of his options. Desperate in the hours before moonrise, he travels to Knockturn Alley to transact some dangerous business.
1. Part One

'… _who,  
Unfit for other life, compell'd by hunger  
And lack of other means, in desperate manner  
Daring the event to the teeth, are all in uproar…'  
~from __Henry VIII_

 **In Desperate Manner – Part One**

Remus Lupin could not believe it had come to this.

His head swam with the effort of Apparation, and he groped for the sooty brick wall that enclosed the narrow passage between _The Leaky Cauldron_ and the rest of Diagon Alley. Chilled fingers could scarcely feel the rough surface that chafed against his palm. In his other hand, his wand trembled. He tightened his hold upon it, the delicate joints of his hand grinding painfully. It was less than eight hours 'til moonrise, and every muscle and sinew in his body was taut in anticipation of the transformation. Remus leaned heavily against the wall, his head hanging between the sharp angle of his thin shoulders, trying desperately to catch his breath.

The journey had left him spent and quaking. It was not such a long way to Apparate by Remus's usual standards: a little more than two hundred miles from the hollow just beyond the crumbling garden wall of his cottage to this most familiar of London landmarks. On an ordinary day, even malnourished as he was, it would have posed no great obstacle. But now, burning with fever and riddled with a hundred twitching torments, his mind muddled by the pull of the moon, Remus understood that he was fortunate he had not Splinched himself.

The back door of _The Leaky Cauldron_ swung open with a draught of warm air that made him shiver. He had left a bitterly cold morning behind in Yorkshire, and now the more southerly February damp was seeping around the edges of his threadbare cloak. Remus's fingertips clutched the wall more desperately still as the breeze brought with it the mingled aroma of the pub's morning custom: beer and tea and a breakfast fry-up. The smells repulsed him, making his empty stomach churn viciously as the middle-aged couple who had opened the door brushed past him, bound for Diagon Alley and all its quotidian wonders.

Remus was wretchedly hungry. At any other time, those half-forgotten scents would have left him mad with longing. But in his last hours as a man he craved only the succulent, coppery taste of raw, red meat. He could not remember when he had last indulged that yearning; certainly not in the eight hard, lean months since last he had found work. He could not often stretch his meagre earnings beyond the bare necessities of life, and this winter even those had eluded him more often than not. It had been four days since he had eaten anything at all.

It was one of the hallmarks of his hand-to-mouth existence that he always remembered his most recent meal with aching clarity. In this case, it had been little enough to speak of: two spoonfuls of beans, the last scrapings of a tin he had bought with a twenty-pence piece found in the slush-choked gutter outside the phone box in the little town of Hawes. Remus had gone there immediately after waking to a fresh fall of snow upon the countryside, hoping that the vicar of St. Margaret's church would be glad of an offer to clear the paths around the parsonage and the churchyard.

Such labour had been worth a few pounds now and then in the past, but he was not the only one with that idea: he had arrived to find an enterprising youth hard at work, bopping his head to the dulcet tones of some muffled Muggle singer piped through the ear-sized speakers of a pocket tape player. Once upon a time, Remus would have known to whom he might describe the device in order to get a detailed explanation of the proper terminology and the inner workings of the thing. Now, the thought of that was almost more painful than any of the rest; worse than the hunger, than the insidious nausea of the barely-adequate Apparation, than the agonies of the incipient moon. Remus shut his mind to it.

He had stretched that tin of beans as far as he could, multiplying each meagre serving as thoroughly as the physical laws of Transfiguration allowed. But even the most skilled of wizards could only do so much, and the resulting meals always tasted bland and somehow diminished. Nor was there as much nourishment in a dish of duplicated beans as there would have been in a full serving of the genuine article, but at least it sat in his stomach like a bowlful instead of a spoonful. He had slept comfortably that night.

Remus forced himself to relinquish his hold upon the wall, tucking his wand away with care. His hands, bare to the raw air, already felt chapped and sore. He hugged his cloak more closely around him and tried to get up the courage to step out into the wizarding high street. On any other day he might have been tempted by the dustbins on the other side of the pub's back stair, compelled to sift through the contents in search of some peelings or a crust of half-eaten toast to blunt the edge of his famine and scrub the vile taste of a too-long fast from his mouth. Today he knew he would find nothing he could stomach. Only one thing would answer his need today, and he meant to have it. He squared his shoulders, his spine protesting miserably, and opened the door that led into Diagon Alley.

At this hour of the morning, and on such a day, the street was fairly quiet. Witches and wizards moved between the shops with brisk, purposeful strides, shrouded in river-mist even just across the road. Remus did not pause to watch them. He did not raise his eyes to the enticing window displays, filled with colour and warmth and unimaginable bounty. He kept his eyes on the pavement and shuffled along as quickly as he could for the turn into Knockturn Alley.

He hated this place, with its dingy cobbles and menacing shadows. A thin sliver of sky, indifferently grey, slashed down the length of the dodgy street. The day was dim enough that the streetlamps in Diagon Alley were glowing warmly. Here, the wrought iron posts held broken lanterns, and the only light came from the globes hanging over the scratched and weathered doors of suspect-looking premises or filtered through unwashed windows in which the dusty skeletons of displays long neglected loomed like the ghosts that swirled in Remus's heart.

The shop he wanted was well down Knockturn Alley, just past the place where the street narrowed yet again, only just wide enough to let a single cart past. Not that there were any carts or carriages here. Back-door deliveries of unmarked crates were more the speed, concealed until the last moment under cloaks or by Disillusionment Charms. Remus had found this particular establishment seven years ago, when he had been looking for a bottle of pain-reducing potion on the cheap. The idea of squandering money on such a luxury was laughable just at present, but back then it had seemed like a necessity in the wake of particularly bad transformations.

It was an apothecary shop, or at least it looked like the relic of an apothecary shop. Remus stepped across the threshold into a room scarcely warmer or less damp than the street outside, and found himself surrounded by low, dusty and almost-bare shelves. Anything left out front was fair game for the thieves and sleight-of-hand artists that frequented Knockturn Alley. The proprietor kept most of his stock behind the high counter.

The man was tall, with the forward-thrust head and rounded shoulders of a vulture. He was perched on a stool, reading a two-day-old copy of _The Daily Prophet._ As Remus approached, his eyes went instinctively to the lead headline. It was an old habit, a remnant of the days when the news of the wizarding world had still seemed relevant to his daily life. He supposed there was a _Situations Available_ section in there, as well, but it was useless to him now. Even if he did manage to find work despite his spotty employment history and his shabby raiment, he was in no fit state to perform it – nor would he be in the wake of the moon, if he did not accomplish his mission today.

'What do you want?' the man asked gruffly, not even glancing up. Above three photographs, each featuring a head-and-shoulders shot of a pompous-looking person of middle years, _The Daily Prophet_ proclaimed: _Candidates Debate Wand Subsidy Reform_. Squinting in the gloom, Remus picked out the line beneath, which told him the election was now less than two weeks away, and the polls heavily favoured Cornelius Fudge for Minister for Magic.

'You sell—' Remus's voice caught in his throat, hoarse from the chill and from a habit of disuse. He took another half-step forward so that he could lean one bony hip against the counter. His head throbbed mercilessly, and he was trembling. It was not wholly because of hunger, or even the drag of the moon upon his bones.

He could not believe it had come to this.

'You sell restricted ingredients,' he managed, closing his eyes and bracing himself. 'Hard-to-find ingredients. Illeg—'

'Don't sell nuthin' illegal here!' the man said shortly, closing his paper with a snap and laying it aside. He glared at Remus. 'You want something _special_ , now, I can get it for you. Always providin' you're willin' to pay.'

Remus shook his head tightly, not daring to move it too far off-kilter. He felt as if he might be sick. 'I'm not buying,' he said thickly. 'I'm selling.'

'Selling?' The man raked his eyes over Remus's frame. The cloak hid a multitude of evils – the shabby robes, neatly patched but badly faded; the length of cord that he wore in place of a belt; the shapeless hang of garments that had been purchased by a slender but healthy young man in a time of war and were worn now by a gaunt invalid whose only purpose in life was to scrape together another day of it. But apparently the shopkeeper saw enough to convince him that this was no Auror in disguise. He stroked his weak chin with its wisps of mousy whisker. 'Just what might you be selling?'

Remus's eyes wandered to the tightly-packed shelves behind the man. Roots and stalks and seeds in scratched glass jars. Ceramic cruets labelled in blue glazing, the contents marked in Latin. Jugs full of murky fluids ready to be measured out to order. He saw the stock bottle of pain-reliever. A phial of a familiar brew that would take the edge off of his mounting fever in less than twenty minutes. A thick, dark carmine suspension that he would be yearning for soon enough, if only all went well. Remus remembered gentle hands, supporting his head and tipping glass measuring cups full of all those things against his lips. He remembered a steady and capable finger, stroking his throat to induce him to swallow when he was too weak and too far gone with pain to remember to do it himself. How long had it been since he had faced a transformation with a cache of such luxuries to aid him? He did not know, and he choked back the covetous ache that rose in his chest.

'Blood,' he whispered, unable to meet the man's eyes.

The apothecary – if apothecary he was: it was impossible to know whether he had any genuine qualifications – tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing shrewdly. 'What kind of blood?' he asked. 'Dragon? Salamander? Veela?'

'Werewolf.'

The word seemed to crack in the dusty air. Remus felt a hot rush of shame rise up to drown him, and he clutched the countertop with a shaking hand. He waited for the man to recoil, or to draw his wand, or perhaps to spit upon him. Instead, the spidery hand rose again to pluck at the frizzled whiskers.

'Bottled,' said the apothecary; 'or fresh?'

It took every ounce of his waning resolve, and still Remus did not think he could have forced out the sound if not for the crushing weight of penury and desperation behind this whole venture.

'Fresh,' he croaked, and he flipped back the left side of his cloak. With a hand that trembled as if palsied, he raked up his frayed sleeve to bare his thin arm. Its tangle of scars, old and new, gave his pale skin a strange texture in the poor light.

The man grunted, an unreadable sound that Remus nonetheless immediately began to dissect. Had he heard disgust? Horror? Fear? All of them, surely, and other things as well: disdain, hatred, dismissal. Refusal?

'Werewolf blood's useless 'cept on the day of the full moon,' the man said. 'The best stuff's taken while the beast's transformed. Used to be impossible to get it, but now with the Wolfsbane Potion…'

Remus swallowed the piteous noise of longing that wanted to rise to his lips. The Wolfsbane Potion. He knew of it, of course. Was there a werewolf in Britain who did not? It was the stuff of idle fantasy, of wild, half-drunken hope. It was not a cure; there was no cure. But it allowed a werewolf to keep his rational mind throughout the transformation. It gave him sanity. A werewolf who transformed under the influence of the Wolfsbane Potion was tame. Safe. Able to endure the change without the need to restrain himself, without the fear of getting loose to hunt and to harm, without the dread of waking to a torn and ravaged body that he would be too weak to heal properly for days. The Wolfsbane Potion was nothing short of bottled humanity.

Remus had never sampled it. Would never have the opportunity to sample it, more than likely. The ingredients alone were prohibitively expensive for a man who might scrape together thirty-five Galleons a year at doubtful, menial jobs he could never keep for longer than a handful of months – when he could get them at all. The skill required to brew the potion was considerable, far beyond Remus's own talents. And even if he had left Hogwarts with an Outstanding NEWT in the subject, he could not handle the most important component of the potion. Making it himself was out of the question. Paying someone of sufficient skill to brew it for him – he might undergo today's demeaning ritual every month for a year, and still not save up enough to afford one course of treatment.

'The moon is full tonight,' he said, trying to close his mind to the tantalising, impossible dream. 'Surely… surely it's worth _something_.'

The man gave him a hard, quick look. An appraising look. He wanted Remus to think that the market was glutted with the superior product – a product he could not offer, not without the unobtainable miracle of the Wolfsbane Potion. But Remus was no fool. If anyone but the werewolves in Damocles Belby's clinical trial had access to the potion, they were far too comfortably off to be driven to sell their blood. And the werewolves in the trial would be under observation at the full moon, affording men like this Knockturn Alley charlatan no opportunity to bleed them.

'You sure about that?' he said. 'Seems to me the moon's not full 'til Sunday.'

It was probably just a negotiation tactic, but the sheer stupidity of the question made Remus want to cry out in frustration. Was he sure about that? No, of course he wasn't. It was a wild guess. He could not feel the pull of the moon in every joint and sinew in his aching body. He could not feel it thrumming in his teeth or pulsing behind his eyeballs. He had no idea what he was talking about.

'It's tonight,' he said mildly. 'You're welcome to check.'

The man slid down off of his stool. He was shorter than he had looked when sitting, and his clothes were far finer than his surroundings might suggest. Warm winter wool, smooth and glossy and cut well for his frame. Remus looked down at his own body, hurriedly pulling his ragged sleeve back down to hide the scars and starkly prominent veins that marred his arm. He swallowed against a throat rough as sandpaper.

Even now, he could not believe it had come to this.

The apothecary was at his worktable now. Above it was a shelf of heavy references: potions manuals, an anatomy book, volumes of physiology and symptomology, a pharmacopeia. The man took down the slenderest of them all: a little red volume that could only be _Bartlett's Magical Almanac._ The man lit an old-fashioned chimney lamp with a tap of his wand, and leaned into the light of the flame as he thumbed through the back pages. He stared for an unnecessarily long interval at the one he wanted, before putting away the book, dimming the light, and meandering back up the length of the shop.

'Full tonight, so it is,' he said. 'How much do you have for me?'

The question made Remus's shrunken stomach shrivel still smaller. He wanted to huddle in on himself, to hang his head, to slink away and try to forget he had ever even imagined doing something like this. But he could not. He had not eaten in days, and before that he had gone weeks without a proper meal. If he went into his transformation this weak, this starved, the wolf would be mad with hunger. It would ravage itself to ribbons, and he would not have the strength to close the wounds. He would bleed to death in the cold root cellar beneath the tumbledown cottage, and no one would even know to look for his body.

'How much are you offering?' he asked instead, meeting a question with a question. He had not forgotten how to barter, though it had been a long time since last he'd had anything of value with which to bargain.

'I pay five Galleons a pint,' the man said. 'You'll find that's standard.'

Remus did not know if that was true. What he did know was that the werewolf blood for sale at the licenced and Ministry-inspected apothecaries back in Diagon Alley – blood that could only be obtained by special permit given exclusively to established Potions Masters and qualified Healers – went for three Galleons an ounce. He had done his research. He always did his research.

'Ten,' he said, his voice far steadier than his resolve.

The man stared at him, incredulous. 'What?' he said.

'Ten Galleons a pint,' said Remus. 'I know what it sells for. You'll still turn a tidy profit.'

He could hear a voice, a long-lost voice that he tried to guard his mind from except in the throes of his darkest nightmares. _That's not a tidy profit, Moony: that's highway robbery! Are you mad? Get out of here! You can get the money some other way: any way but this!_

Remus's teeth ground together so sharply that they squeaked. There was no other choice left to him; no other option but theft, and he refused to stoop to that. He would sooner starve, would sooner bleed to death. The voice was lying. Of course it was. Lies, lies, how many years of lies?

Sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he simply could not understand.

'Five,' the apothecary was saying. 'Standard price. It don't sell for near as much down here as it do elsewhere – but _elsewhere_ you'd have to go through the Ministry, wouldn't you? Official channels, half a dozen people involved at least. And then they'd all know what you are, am I right?'

He grinned hungrily. _Wolfishly_. Remus felt his shame crest high again. 'Eight,' he whispered. 'Eight Galleons a pint.'

'No.' The apothecary crossed his arms, looking more like a vulture than ever, and shook his head with firm finality. 'Five Galleons a pint, or you can walk out of here right now. Make trouble, and the Werewolf Capture Unit's just a quick shout by Floo away.'

Remus did not truly believe the man would call for the Werewolf Capture Unit. He would not want any Ministry official poking around this place. Nevertheless the threat was effective. The truth was that Remus would reap the worst of the consequences if it came to that. More to the point, he could not afford to be turned away.

'Five Galleons, then,' he said, feeling his whole body sag with weariness. 'Will you take two pints?'

Ten Galleons was not much, but he could make it stretch for as many weeks. Maybe more, if he managed to scrape together a few odd jobs or even – if fortune smiled on him and the Fates were kind – something like regular work. By then, spring would be well underway and the first young greens would be growing in his stony little garden. By then, there would be mushrooms to forage in the woods, and a chance of snaring a rabbit or two. Remus hated that: snuffing out a little life made him feel more like a predator, a monster, than anything else could. Well, _almost_ anything else, he thought now, as he stood prepared to trade on his status as a Dark Creature.

'I'll take as much as you want,' the apothecary said. 'None of my business. But you've got to know that it ain't recommended to give more than one pint at a time. The Muggles won't take more, and they're mad enough to put one person's blood in another person's veins!'

Remus did not want to think on the intricacies of Muggle medicine. He forced himself to lift his eyes from the scratched countertop to make a sweep of the room. 'Do we do it here?' he asked.

'Where else?' The man disappeared behind one of the shelves and came back with an enamelled tin basin and a long tube of rolled leather. He set down the former and unrolled the latter, spreading out a series of barber-surgeon's tools held in place by stretched, sagging loops. 'Best take a seat. We can't have you fainting away in the middle of it.'

He nodded back towards the window, where a couple of shaky-looking stools were shoved up in one corner. Remus tore himself away from the inadequate anchorage of the counter to fetch one. By the time he returned, the man had chosen his tool: a wicked-looking fleam with a polished horn handle. At least the thing looked clean, and it was undeniably sharp. Perhaps it would not be so bad.

Remus lowered himself carefully onto the stool, resisting the urge to simply let his flagging strength ebb from his unsteady legs. He rolled up his sleeve again, more carefully this time. He braced himself against the counter with his right hip, resting his right elbow upon it as he stretched his other arm over the bowl.

The apothecary shot him a look of pure loathing, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him nearer. He positioned Remus's arm so that his forearm rested on the far lip of the bowl, and his upper arm just above the elbow on the near lip. He palpated the veins in the crook of Remus's arm, looking thoughtful. Then he put down the fleam and reached under the counter to produce a thin strap of leather with a buckle on one end. It was too short and narrow to be a belt: it looked more like a garter. But the old stains in the leather told Remus its purpose, and a moment later it was around his arm just below the bicep, cinched to tingling tightness. His veins, already prominent under the thin veneer of papery skin, bulged out far enough to cast a fine shadow.

'Make a fist,' the apothecary said. Remus obeyed, trying to fight back the nauseous horror rising within him.

He could not believe it had come to this.

He heard another voice now, anxious and dismayed. _Moony, you can't! Don't be ridiculous! You're not an animal; don't let him treat you like one. It's only money, Moony. It's not worth this._

 _It's only money._ How often had he heard that? It had always been _only money_ to James, who had never wanted for it in all his too, too short life. Tears, unexpected and unstoppable, rose in Remus's eyes at the thought of his friend. His loyal, loving, generous friend, who had been so horrified to learn that Remus had cut back to two meals a day during that first, viciously cold winter after they had left Hogwarts. James had bundled Remus up and bustled him out of his bare little flat, whisked him off to London for a hot meal in one of the restaurants he and Lily liked to frequent, and then insisted upon supervising the food shopping for weeks afterwards. A few missed dinners had roused him to such concern and righteous indignation. This? This would have broken his heart.

'Do it,' Remus said harshly, casting his gaze away from the limb he had offered up for sacrifice. 'I'm ready.'

'All right, all right, don't get your knickers in a twist,' the man said. He took the fleam and ran a thumb over the largest vein, right in the crease of Remus's elbow. Then with a spare, efficient motion he rocked the tool against the skin. There was an almost inaudible _pop_ and a sudden release of pressure, and dark blood welled up from the puncture, streaming over either side of Remus's arm and pooling in the bowl below.

'Open your fist, slowly,' the man said.

Remus's fingers were numb, the bloated blueness disappearing as the spent blood drained from his body. His arm shook as he released his taut muscles, but the apothecary seized his wrist and held it fast against the rim of the bowl. With his other hand, he released the leather strap, whipping it out of sight. Feeling returned to Remus's nerves, and a dull, aching pain came from the place he had been pierced. The blood was flowing more slowly now, having to make its journey down into his hand before washing back towards the wound. It was not as dark, either, the crimson diffusing the deeper maroon of the first few ounces in the bowl.

It was a haunting sight, the rich red washing over his waxen skin. Remus could not look away. He sat transfixed, watching the very substance of his being run away in twin glossy rivulets. The flow was steady, unchangeable, and yet he thought he could see it pulsing, drawing near and then far, growing large and then small. That was when he realised there were spots rising in his vision, and that his nausea was no longer an abstract thing.

He raised his right arm, still bracing his elbow against the countertop. He buried his eyes against his palm, leaning heavily into the inadequate support. He tried to breathe slowly, steadily, as he had been taught long ago in a round tower room filled with low tables and mismatched tuffets. _In through the nose, out through the mouth_. It was the way he breathed in the last minutes before a transformation, when he strove to empty his mind and to calm his peripatetic heartbeat and to prepare himself for the loss of all reason.

There was movement in his periphery. The apothecary had picked up his wand. He tilted it at the bowl, taking a measurement. 'Twenty ounces,' he said. 'You're a ready bleeder, ain't you?'

He had always been a ready bleeder, or perhaps a slow clotter. Remus had a hazy memory of falling on the front step, of a grazed knee that bled so copiously that by the time his mother, who had been working in the flowerbed among her marigolds, reached his side, the cuff of his sock was soggy and red. Remus knew it was a memory from _before_ , because he had been wearing short trousers – a normal child's standard garb in those days until the age of seven or eight, but forbidden him from his fifth summer, when the scars began to become too numerous to ignore. So it was not a product of his curse, but of his physiology. Another cruel little quirk of fate, complicating a life already lost in hopeless hurdles.

His pulse was roaring in his ears now, and the room seemed to tilt very slowly to the left, spinning in a lazy anticlockwise direction. Remus drew in a ragged breath through parched lips, forgetting his silent coaching. It hitched in the back of his throat, and he clamped his jaw against it.

'If you're going to be sick, see you don't puke in the bowl,' the apothecary said detachedly. 'I ain't payin' good money for a contaminated product.'

Remus was quite determined not to be sick. There was nothing in him to vomit up, anyhow; nothing but the cup of water he had downed greedily before leaving his cottage, and whatever thin bile burned so mercilessly in his empty belly. Why had he come here? Why had he done this? Why, oh why, oh why?

The wand-tip was glowing again. 'Nearly there,' said the man. 'Thirty and one half. Close your fist.'

He must have obeyed, because the command was not repeated. But Remus could not feel his arm anymore. It had gone quite cold. All his limbs were cold, his legs like leaden weights dangling down the side of the stool. He burrowed further into his right hand, as if he could press some semblance of sensibility back in through his forehead. His vision was blotted out entirely now: black splotches and sun-bright flares blinding him. The world felt very distant.

'There!' the apothecary said triumphantly, and Remus's left arm hit the countertop with a _thunk_ as the man shoved it off of the basin. A sharp pain shot up from the crook of his elbow, and his right hand forgot its duty to his head as it flew to clutch his arm. His skin was slippery with blood, and he burrowed his fingers deep into the meat of his lean muscles, trying to ease the pain and stem the steady trickle still oozing from the puncture.

The apothecary strode away, leaving the basin of blood just beyond Remus's reach. The smell of it was tantalising, maddening, the only thing in all the world that could pierce the haze of dizzy sickness that was wrapped around him. Saliva flooded Remus's mouth, burning in the glands at the base of his jaw. Swallowing frantically, he retched dryly and bowed his head low over his lap. Could it be possible that he was hungry for the taste of _his own blood_? Nausea and mortification threatened to swallow him. He was an animal.

The man was back. Remus glanced up warily, unable to quite focus his eyes but aware enough to make out the cotton bud and the sliver of glass. The apothecary dipped the former, delicately, into the dish. He smeared a scarlet comet-tail across the slide and inspected it with shrewd eyes. He held his wand behind the glass, muttering an incantation that Remus could not hear over the roar in his ears. The wand-tip glowed white, then green, then a sickly chartreuse.

'Hmph,' said the apothecary, disgust evident in his voice. 'Not very good quality, is it? Anaemic. Not worth five Galleons a pint. I'll give you four.'

Remus could not immediately make sense of the words. He gripped his wounded arm more tightly, feeling the blood ooze up between his fingers. He had to stop the bleeding: he had already lost more than he could spare, and the life flowing from his veins now was flowing for nothing. But the thought of reaching for his wand was unattainable, and the effort of even the simplest of healing charms was beyond him right now. He could not even muster the energy to speak.

'Just like a werewolf, misrepresenting the quality of the goods,' complained the apothecary. He was moving his wand over the bowl now, casting some sort of charm – no doubt to preserve the blood, to keep it from curdling or separating. 'Small wonder an average establishment won't harvest their own part-human blood. Too much trouble by half.'

'You said five,' Remus mumbled, the words coming thickly around a tongue that felt like sandpaper. He blinked thrice, as hard as he could, but he still could not bring the room back into focus. His bony elbow was aching with the pressure of his unsteady body leaning upon it. He moved the fingers of his left hand to reassure himself that he still could. The bloody flesh beneath his grasp shifted and rippled with the tendons. 'Five Galleons a pint.'

'And I'm telling you this swill ain't worth that price,' said the man, annoyed. 'Four Galleons a pint, eight for the lot. Take it or leave it.'

'We had an agreement,' Remus protested feebly. He could not mount a cogent argument. He could not even lift his leaden head to look the proprietor in the eyes. 'I need… I need…'

He could not articulate what he needed. His hazy brain was trying to muddle through the math, to work out how long he could survive on eight Galleons. He could not bear to do this again. Even if it did not take him months to replenish the store of blood he had shed today, even if he had not been guaranteed to lose still more tonight, he could not bear to do this again. He felt wrung out, shrunken, thoroughly abased. It was as if his humanity had flowed away with the life-giving fluid, leaving him a savage husk.

He could not believe it had come to this.

'Eight Galleons is what I'm paying,' said the apothecary. 'If you don't like it, you're welcome to take the blood back. Have to provide your own container, of course, but…'

He shrugged indifferently. Cold despair drenched Remus. He had no choice, and they both knew it.

'Eight Galleons, then,' he rasped, his skull rocking in a curt little nod that made the room spin still more perilously. 'Now.'

The man chuckled. Dear God, he _chuckled_. 'Sure, yeah, _now_ ,' he mocked. He moved up the length of the counter to the rusty old cash register, and rang up the purchase. The tinny bell was like an ice pick into Remus's temples. He cringed, dragging his arm nearer to his body. His wand. A healing charm. It wasn't a cursed wound. It wouldn't take much of an effort to close.

But he had no strength for any effort at all.

'…six, seven, eight,' the apothecary counted, slapping down the gold coins in turn. They were old, scratched, their gleam long forgotten. Remus did not care. It was money, hard, cold wizarding money. It was food. Meat for tonight, a sack of dried beans and one of oats for the days to come. Perhaps even a loaf of bread. He could not think farther ahead than that. Planning, budgeting, proper shopping, that would have to wait until after the full moon.

He released his desperate grip on his arm and dragged the coins to him, burying them in the inner pocket of his tired old robes. There was something in that pocket already, soft and pliable beneath his calloused fingertips. Remus pulled it out, feeling the weight of the Galleons settle consolingly against the washboard of his ribs. It was a handkerchief. White linen aged to yellowish, old bloodstains brown on the cloth despite careful laundering. The hem, stitched so skilfully by nimble hands long turned to dust, was worn away in places to a fraying fringe of threads. In one corner, worn white chainstitch spelled out his initials, the 'J' unravelled almost to bare memory.

 _Your mum makes them, doesn't she, Moony_? A third voice, higher than the others. A round, kindly face, lit up with effortful interest in a simple Christmas gift. _I think that's nice. There's a lot of love in homemade things, you know._

Peter. Dear, faithful Peter, always so careful of his feelings. Remus wondered what Peter would make of all this. He would be just as horrified as James, but frightened with it. Peter had always struggled with the reality of the wolf, even after the mystery had been stripped away by nights of familiarity and madcap play. And it would have worried him to see Remus in such a wretched state. He would have taken him by the arm, found him somewhere to lie down, fetched him a cup of tea, hot and ridiculously sweet. _It's good for shock, you know. Sugar, I mean. Drink up, Moony. You'll feel yourself again in a minute or two._

Remus rammed the handkerchief into the crook of his arm, soaking up the blood and staunching the wound. He got clumsily to his feet, swaying.

'You'll pass out if you get up too soon,' said the apothecary. The warning was indifferent: habitual. How often had he done this, leeching those too desperate to have any other choice? Suddenly Remus wanted to put as much distance between himself and this man as possible. He wanted to leave this dingy place and its questionable wares far behind. Most of all, he wanted to get away from that bowl, that bowl that was glutted with his blood. That bowl that still, incredibly, smelled of temptation.

He made for the door, unable to keep a straight course. He fumbled with the handle, using his left hand because his right was holding the handkerchief to the still-seeping wound left by the fleam. He staggered out into the street, unsure which way to turn. There was a lamppost a few yards to the right, its lantern shattered and dark. Remus canted towards it, the socket of his shoulder striking the iron as he leaned desperately in for support. The world was spinning, spinning, spinning.

He could see the place where the street widened, the pavement curving to accommodate the change. That way lay Diagon Alley, and the butcher's shop where he could buy a pound of their cheapest stewing meat. Remus tried to fix his thoughts on that, to focus on the goal of the entire miserable exercise. He panted shallowly, struggling to muster the strength to abandon the support of the post. He adjusted his hold on the handkerchief, now soaked through with blood. His head swam as if he had just Disapparated. He closed his eyes against the whirling nexus of coloured lights that swam before them.

Diagon Alley. Food to take the edge off of this insidious dizziness. Food to give him enough strength to return to the little cottage on the moors. Food, to ensure his survival tonight when the wolf raged and rampaged. This, all of this, for food.

Remus pushed himself off of the post, his body protesting the effort and his skin slick with cold sweat. The bite of the winter air cut through his inadequate garments. His cloak was whole, though worn thin and fraying, and his robes were neatly and meticulously patched. The undergarments beneath were in tatters, too far gone for darning charms or even the most careful needle. Remus was shivering, chilled to his core. He could feel his wand poking the crest of his hip, still with him at least, even if he did not have the strength to use it. That was all he needed to know. He could leave this place, if he was sure he had his wand.

He started up the street, back towards the light and welcome of Diagon Alley. It was not so far to walk: only a few blocks. His down-at-heel shoes shuffled against the pavement. His right sock was wet with icy sludge. There was a hole in that shoe. He'd have to find it, see if he could patch it. New shoes were as much a fever-dream as the Wolfsbane Potion. His thoughts were muddled, wandering, molasses-slow and galloping all at once. Remus tried to focus on the task at hand. All he had to do was walk. He could do that. He could.

He managed another three steps before he fell, limbs crumpling bonelessly as his head wobbled and the sickly fingers of a cold swoon seized him. He crashed onto the cobbles, knees first and then his shoulder. Even before his head struck the pavement, he was falling away into oblivion. One last, fading thought blazed through his muddled mind.

He could not believe it had come to this.


	2. Part Two

**In Desperate Manner – Part Two**

Remus was accustomed to waking with no clear idea of where he was. Time slipped away in the wake of a transformation, leaving him adrift in hazy half-forgotten memories of more than three hundred such awakenings – always bewildered, always in pain, never certain just what damage he had done to himself this time. This was no different. He could not fight through the veil of bone-deep weariness to bestir himself. He did not dare to move, lest he aggravate joints and tendons lately stretched and torn and reshaped beyond the range of what a man's body was meant to bear. And he could not remember where he was.

Smooth, worn stone beneath him, glacially chilly. Not the Shack, then, with its creaking wooden floors. Not the bare basement room where he had transformed throughout his childhood and all those summers, home from Hogwarts. The little house on Chancery Row was long gone, lost to time and the ravages of fate. Not the ruined foundation of the medieval manor house on James's parents' estate – that, too, belonged to an age long gone. An age when he had not transformed alone, had never woken to worse than a few nips and scratches, had always come to afterwards to find a blanket already draped over his naked, twisted form, a gentle hand ready to touch his brow, someone nearby with water, a long, lean body beside him, blessedly warm in the dawn chill, shaggy black fur coarse against his skin…

Remus moaned, fighting off the memory. It was too late. The old anguish gripped his heart. Loneliness yawned like a pit within him. He tried to turn his head away, away from the ghosts and the sorrow and the might-have-beens.

And he felt the stone again. Smooth, wet, incandescently cold. Sudden panic gripped him. He was not in his root cellar, where he had transformed every month for the last three years. Where was he? Had he broken loose at last? Sought out human habitations? Bitten? Killed?

Spurred on by this terrifying possibility, he found the strength to roll to his front, pushing himself up onto his elbows. Every joint in his body protested, his spine most of all. Sharp pain lanced up his left arm, from the crook of his elbow into his axilla. He sucked in a ragged, hitching breath and forced smarting eyes to focus on the stone between his loosely fisted hands. Cobbles, fitted imperfectly together and worn smooth by centuries of passing feet. A street. Knockturn Alley.

It came back to him then. This was not the morning after a transformation, but the morning before. He had come here, all the way to London, because he needed to eat before he transformed. Because if he did not, the wolf would be mad with hunger, more violent even than at other times, deadly to itself in its frenzy of starvation. And Remus had no money for food, for the one thing he would be able to keep in his stomach in these last hours before the change. So he had come to London. To Knockturn Alley. He had come to sell his blood.

His right shoulder hit the pavement as his hand flew to his waist. Fingers, numb with the cold, scrabbled against the folds of his robes until they closed upon something long and slender and smooth as polished glass. His wand. He had his wand. He had fainted in the street, in this most dangerous of wizarding streets, but no one had taken his wand.

To call it luck would be unfair. It was astonishing. Remus tugged his wand free of his garments and got his elbow back under him again, head hanging as he stared at the length of cypress wood. His breath came in shallow heaves that misted in the chilly air. It was near freezing, and perniciously damp. He became gradually aware that his whole right side was heavy with cold gutter water. He was soaked to the skin and shivering deep in his bones.

He got his knees under him, elbows still braced and head hanging low. His hair hung in straggles, curtaining his face. Indifferent brown now streaked with grey, hopelessly overgrown after a long winter so filled with worries and the threat of starvation that matters of personal grooming had fallen by the wayside. Remus closed his eyes, trying to level out his breathing. _In through the nose, out through the mouth,_ just as he had learned so long ago.

At last he rose from elbows to palms, the fingers of his right hand curled about his wand and his weight on the heel of that hand as he eased himself back onto his ankles. Black spots danced before his eyes, but he did not feel the urge to swoon afresh. His throat was stinging and there was a thin, coppery taste in his mouth. Slowly, cautiously, he pivoted his head upon a neck that creaked and crackled with protest, looking back in the direction he had come. The dingy window of the apothecary shop stared blankly out into the shadowy street. There was no sign that the proprietor was looking out, no sign that he had seen him fall.

Remus's hand flew to his heart, thumping frantically against the front of his robes as a new and awful possibility struck him. But he felt the heavy _clink_ of gold against his ribs, and breathed a little easier still. The Galleons were still in his pocket.

Slowly and painfully he climbed to his feet, at first clutching his knees and crouching low with his head hanging between his shoulders, fighting off a fresh wave of dizziness. When at last he was able to straighten his spine, he still could not lift the stoop from his shoulders nor stand proud like a man. Nausea and hunger warred within him, and he was very weak, but there was more to it than that. He felt utterly defeated, mortified in body and in spirit, more animal than wizard. What had he done?

He could not dwell on that. He did not know how long he had lain upon the pavement. He did not know the time. The thick, low-hanging clouds obscured even the memory of the sun. How many hours left until sunset? How long did he have to transact his meagre business and find his way home?

He did not pause to wonder _how_ he would get home, when the southward Apparation had taxed him so terribly even before the sacrifice of two pints of blood. He started up the street, fixing bleary eyes on the place where Knockturn Alley met Diagon: the border between the underworld of unscrupulous shopkeepers and petty criminals, and the ordinary hum of wizarding life. Perhaps if he left this unsavoury place behind, Remus thought hollowly, he could regain a little of his own humanity.

His feet felt weighted with lead instead of icy water. His left sock was soaked now, too. He hoped the damp had seeped in from the top, and not through some new hole in his shoe. He knew he wasn't likely to get that lucky. Every step was bought with pain: he could feel the grinding pull of the moon in his hips now, and his head was throbbing. But at long last he reached the corner and the first glowing streetlamp. He leaned heavily upon it, dragging in weary breaths.

Remus's wand was still in his hand. He tucked it carefully away and scanned the neat row of storefronts to either side of him. The one he wanted was only three shops down from the turn into Knockturn Alley. On its ornately-carved shingle, a chop and a roasted chicken stood out proudly over the legend _Garth and Sons, Butchers_.

A brass bell over the door tinkled as Remus shuffled over the threshold. He raised a shaking hand to rake the hair back from his face, trying to make himself look passing respectable. There were half a dozen patrons in the front of the shop, some browsing the selection of meats laid out in a long glass case with copper-coloured shelves of braided wire. The prices were written out on neat little chips of slate in filigreed brass holders. Sausages and hocks of ham hung in the window. At any other time of month they would have been mouthwatering, tempting. Now all Remus could smell was smog and saltpetre. His longing eyes travelled to the case instead.

Meat, such a quantity of glistening red meat. There were steaks and roasts, legs of lamb and racks of ribs. Against the porcelain platters, the meat was gloriously crimson, little pools of bloody fluid lying beneath like strange, enticing lace. Remus's mouth flooded with spittle, his stomach churning and every fibre of his being tingling with painful yearning. He could not remember how long ago he had last tasted meat, but now, in this moment scant hours before moonrise, there was nothing in the world he wanted more.

'You go ahead, love,' an elderly witch said, stepping out of her place in the short queue and giving Remus a look of soft-eyed sympathy. 'You oughtn't be out running errands on a day like this, not if you're feeling poorly.'

He nodded tightly, not daring to let his head bob too far off centre. Even this small motion brought with it a fresh wave of dizziness. 'Thank you,' he whispered, stepping into the gap. He did not have the strength to argue. Nor the will. His eyes travelled back to the case with its succulent temptations. The lamb would be so tender, gentle on his thrumming jaw. The flank steak would have a deep, rich flavour, almost gamey. He had a special fondness for ribeye, for it was the cut that Peter had chosen for him the very first time he had been able to indulge the strange craving that had been such a guilty secret.

Peter, dear, thoughtful Peter, had seized command of the Marauders one autumn morning, and marched them all off to the Hogwarts kitchens. There he had lectured happily on the French and the Germans and the Italians, all of whom (he said) ate raw meat all the time. And he had even tried a bit himself, leaving Remus feeling able at last to feed himself, when always before he had fasted…

'What'll it be?' The butcher was a stout man, robes rolled up to the elbows to reveal huge, thickly muscled forearms. His hands were scrupulously clean, scrubbed pink. His heavy apron was streaked in only two places with blood. He had a brisk, pleasant expression on his face, and he was trying to look Remus in the eye – if only Remus had felt able to raise his gaze to meet the man's.

'Stew meat,' he said. The sound was lost between them. Remus cleared his throat and repeated himself. 'Stew meat, the cheapest kind. One… one pound, please.'

He could have eaten more. Even with his shrunken stomach, he was quite sure he could have eaten more. But he could not justify the expense. From the corner of his eye, he read the prices. Meat cost six times what it had when he was a child. The thought made him feel utterly helpless. Hopeless.

'Beef, pork or mutton?' the butcher asked, tucking his head to look into the case.

'Whatever is cheapest,' Remus murmured. He knew how the words sounded, and his cheeks burned. He doubted there was any flush of colour in them. He doubted he'd have blood to spare for blushing for the next two months or more.

'Right you are,' the butcher said cheerfully. 'As is, or chopped?'

He would have gnawed a slab of the stuff if he had to, but there was no need. 'Chopped, please,' said Remus. 'Half-inch cubes?'

The man grunted his agreement and took the appropriate platter from the case. His apprentice was handing a parcel over the counter to another customer: a thick, weighty parcel wrapped in brown waxed paper tied with string. Six pounds of meat at least, maybe eight? Dinner for a good-sized family, most likely. Or a party. Remus fixed his eyes on the back of the cash register.

The butcher was working his cleaver expertly. This shop used magic for many things – sanitation, cooling, preservation – but the cutting was always done by hand. Remus had never stopped to wonder whether this was owed to nostalgia, to pride in one's craft, or to some other reason. Perhaps the various charms affected the taste of the meat?

The man slapped the cubes of meat – beef, pork or mutton, he had not said, and in his present state Remus could not tell the difference – onto a set of brass scales mounted on a high plinth so that the customer had an unobstructed view of the pan. The butcher consulted the dial, added two more cubes, then chopped a third in half and put the last fragment on the scale. The needle read one pound exactly. The man looked to Remus for approval, and Remus nodded numbly. Then he picked up the strip he had been cutting from, half an inch square and as long as a forefinger, and flung it onto the pile as well.

'For makeweight,' he said.

While he was wrapping the meat, the apprentice consulted the slate tag and rang up the order. 'Thirteen Sickles,' he said. 'No charge for the cutting.'

Remus fished out one of his eight Galleons, so hard-won and so inadequate. He watched it disappear into the till. He took his change and tucked it away. Then the parcel was in his hand, cool and squashy and far, far too light for his liking. It was a pound, all right. A little better than a pound, in fact, but still so much less than he wanted.

'Thank you,' he murmured, trying and failing to rake up a smile.

' 'Ave a pleasant day!' the youth said. The butcher grinned and waved from the back of the shop. 'Come again!'

Remus inched past the elderly lady who had so kindly let him budge in. He reached for the door too soon, misjudging the distance. He stumbled as he stepped back out into the street, one battered shoe snagging on the edge of the stair.

There was a narrow passage between the butcher shop and the piano tuner's next door. Remus rounded the corner on unsteady legs, his knees weak. There was a rain barrel under the eaves, and further back the rear door of the butcher shop and three weatherbeaten dustbins. There was also an overturned crate, grey with age, its nails furry with rust. Remus staggered over to this makeshift seat and collapsed upon it, the old wood creaking under his weight. He drew up his knees and squared the little package in his lap.

He tore into it with quaking fingers, shoving aside the twine and tearing the paper. He was too frantic with hunger to consider the uses this square of wrapping might have, if only he took the trouble to preserve it. He fished out the first gobbet of meat and crammed it clumsily into his mouth, biting down and tasting the heavenly tang of rich, raw flesh.

He had a second piece in his mouth, and a third, before he realised he was not alone. Further back in the little alleyway, where the shadows were deep and the gloom of the day obscured most details, stood a rangy figure. Wild hair stood out from his head, and his shoulders were narrow and angular. In one hand he held a dustbin lid. The other arm was deep in the bin, and his back was stooped. But he was staring at Remus with wide, startled eyes.

It was a boy, he saw as he chewed ravenously on the tough, fibrous meat. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen at the outside. He wore tattered Muggle jeans and a threadbare jacket. The zip was broken: it hung open over a grimy shirt with cavernous holes in the cheap jersey fabric. He was absolutely filthy, unshorn, unshaven. And he was fishing in the bin behind a butcher's shop.

Ordinary beggars did not look for food in places like this. The bins behind restaurants were best for scrounging food. Or a baker's or a greengrocer's. No one would trust meat they found in a butcher's bin. No one would be desperate enough to do that, not unless meat, raw meat, was the only thing he could endure in his stomach…

Remus's hand was moving to his mouth again, carrying another cube of the cheap stewing flesh. He bit into into it reflexively, his body seizing the nourishment it so desperately needed even as his brain reeled. Squinting against the gloom, he could see the scars: one where the stretched-out neck of the boy's shirt gaped, a crescent of tearing punctures. Another through one of the holes over his caved-in abdomen: long and raking and ragged.

It seemed Remus Lupin was not the only werewolf trying to sate his hunger in Diagon Alley today.

The bin lid fell with a clatter, almost but not quite landing square. The boy was standing straight now, or as straight as could be expected. He too had the stoop of defeat, of steady, grinding pain. And his eyes were enormous in his gaunt face.

'You… you…' he stammered hoarsely, raising a quaking finger to point at Remus. An accusation.

Remus could not speak. His mouth was full, and he could not swallow. He had not yet softened the tough meat enough to swallow, though already there was a hot pain in the ball of his jaw. He felt a sickening stone of guilt settle somewhere beneath his ribs. He would have been mortified to been seen eating raw meat by anyone at all, aware of the savage spectacle he made, snatching it up with his bare hands from a torn butcher's packet. But to be caught in the act by another of his kind was somehow worse.

The boy took two halting steps towards him. His thin lips moved soundlessly. They were cracked, scabbed. A weeping sore blossomed at the corner of his mouth. The yearning in his eyes was terrible to behold, and he was no longer staring at Remus. He was staring at the parcel of stew meat.

One thin hand grasped at empty air.

A horrible, savage impulse seized Remus. His own hand closed possessively over the rubbery parcel. His arm jerked as if to reach for his wand. Every instinct screamed at him to defend his meal, to keep it for himself. He needed it desperately. He had earned it. He had bled for it. It was his.

Hot shame overcame him almost at once, but not quite quickly enough to blot out that first reaction. That was the voice of the wolf, not the wizard: selfish, greedy, thinking first and only of itself in these dark, befuddled days when the pack was long gone. It disgusted Remus. It angered him. It filled him with a self-loathing that he had not even felt in the apothecary's shop.

The other werewolf was just a boy. Practically a child. He was emaciated, ragged. He was starving.

 _He is hungrier than I am_.

Almost before he knew what he was doing, Remus was ripping at the butcher's paper with both hands, widening the hole he had made so carelessly. A few cubes of meat spilled into his lap, rolling into the valley between his bony thighs. He scooped them up again. Hurriedly, carelessly, he sawed the pile of meat in half with the side of his hand. He gathered one portion in both hands, cupping them, holding them out to the boy like a ceremonial offering. He forced himself to swallow, feeling the lump of half-chewed meat burning behind his breastbone.

'Here,' he said, his voice rasping painfully. 'Here, take it.'

The youth needed no further encouragement. He darted forward, his own hands cupped to catch the meat as it slipped slickly between Remus's fingers. He did not pause to juggle his load, or to try to free up one set of fingers. He simply lowered his head like a hound bowing to its dish, and started to gobble down the pieces of meat.

'Slowly,' Remus said, though he knew it was useless. 'You'll make yourself ill.'

The boy was making ravenous, wolfish sounds; sounds that might have turned Remus's stomach at any other time. Now it had other, more pressing concerns. Before he knew it, he had another piece of meat in his own mouth, chewing rapidly.

The boy looked up at him, his hollow cheeks burgeoning and his jaw working wildly. A thousand questions were swimming in his eyes. Remus found his gaze travelling again to his neck, to the bite mark in a place where a werewolf could not bite himself.

A boy. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Running feral through the streets of London. Dressed as a Muggle, no wand to be seen. A werewolf.

'Are you one of his?' Remus whispered, his lips moving of their own accord. His heart was hammering wildly in his chest. His chilled limbs were now completely numb. 'Greyback's? Are you…'

The boy's eyes widened in knowing terror. He looked frantically around, guiltily. He closed his hands over the remaining meat, clutching it close to his chest as if expecting someone to snatch it away. For a moment he looked like a wild animal stiffening to the cry of the hunter's hounds. Then he bolted past Remus, up the narrow channel between the two shops, and out into the street. He almost collided with a young witch pushing a bright purple pram. He veered away from her, one foot splashing in the gutter, and he was out of Remus's narrow field of view.

'Wait!' Remus cried, rising halfway to his feet before the remains of his poor meal began to slide from his lap and he had to fall back, clutching the paper and the scraps of meat. 'Do you have a safe—'

But the words died on his lips. The boy was gone.

 _discidium_

Remus ate the last of the stew meat, desperately savouring every shred. Then he turned the butcher's paper inside out and licked the lingering smears of blood from the waxed underside. He sucked each finger clean, his tongue lingering over the taste. He was far too hungry, far too riddled with the craving, to lose his appetite to what he had just witnessed. His share of the frugal purchase was not enough to fill his stomach, even shrivelled as it was from months of spare eating. It churned hungrily, begging for more. But there was no more to be had. Even if he had felt able to justify the expense, he did not think he could go back into that shop and face the butcher again.

He got to his feet and shuffled to the back of the alleyway. He crumpled up the wrapper and dropped it into the bin the boy had been searching. It was filled with similar papers, much larger sheets stamped with the name of an abattoir. There was no meat that Remus could see. There was not even a scrap of offal. Nothing to reward the young werewolf's pains. Remus slid the lid back into place. It clattered beneath his shaking hand.

He was not sure how he dared to step out into the lamplight of Diagon Alley again. The street was busier now. The clock set over the door of the watchmaker's told him it was a quarter of one. There was still time, then. He was not at all certain that he would be strong enough to Apparate home, but one thing he did know: he would be in no condition at all to leave his cottage tomorrow or for several days to come. And he would need food in the wake of the transformation, if he wanted any hope of rebuilding his strength. He had to face at least one more shopkeeper before he tried to leave London.

There was a grocer's a hundred yards up the street, just past Gringotts. Remus set his eyes upon his goal like a mariner sighting a distant island in a storm. He seemed to walk with geological slowness, his every step heavy and hampered. The meat had done nothing to ease his headache, nor to blunt the edge of his terrible dizziness. Of course it hadn't: it was still churning in his ungrateful, grumbling stomach.

What was wanted after a sudden loss of blood – apart, of course, from a strong dose of Blood-Replenishing Potion, which once upon a time had been a staple of his post-transformation care – was sugar. Sweet drinks were best, quickest to reach the brain. Madam Pomfrey had taught him that, but Madam Pomfrey was far away, tending to the maladies of a new generation of young witches and wizards. Perhaps she had forgotten all about the werewolf she had cared for so tirelessly, never once neglecting to treat him like a boy instead of a beast. Remus supposed she probably had forgotten. It was all so long ago.

There was no flood of saliva as he stepped into the greengrocer's. Hungry, covetous eyes did not rake over the shelves of good, wholesome foodstuffs, despite the fact that for twenty-eight days a month his dreams were haunted with longing for these things. Now, the smells sickened him and his mouth was dry. He knew what he wanted, if only dimly. He knew where to find it, too. He had frequented this store often in the old days: it had been Lily's favourite. They had shopped together, she with her lively imagination and her unlimited budget, and he with his quick eye for bargains and his careful study of the nutritional value of all the most economical foods.

He found his staples quickly: a five-pound bag of dried white beans, and another of cracked oats. It was all the shopping list he could hold in his mind just now, when reason was failing him and his memory was muzzy. As he made his way to the clerk, he passed a section of shelf that gave off a scent that did manage to pierce the fog of the wolf's savage palate, awakening a distant longing in the heart of the wizard. Remus felt his nostrils flare, and he drank in the fragrance.

Ceylon and bergamot. Tea.

He stared at the shelf, at the vast range of choices. Tins of expensive tea leaves, with elegant scripted labels. Boxes of tea, printed with watercolour flowers and ethereal garden scenes. And a little burlap sack labelled simply _Earl Grey, 240 bags_. He looked at the price. Four Sickles: exactly his change from the butcher's. Hurriedly, Remus took it, the very cheapest of the countless options. He knew it would taste faintly stale, woody, worn out. There would be more stalks than leaves, like as not, and the flimsy cheesecloth would disintegrate in the boiling water. He did not care.

He had long ago learned that tea was no luxury, but a necessity. It was a comfort, of course, when comforts were hard to come by. But it was also a distraction, diverting the palate, tricking the belly. A hot cup of tea might serve in place of a meal, allowing him to stretch his food stores still further. The first, strong cup was a tonic to his nerves, and even the third or fourth, when the teabag was exhausted and yielded only a mug of faintly tinted water with a memory of fragrance, could settle his stomach before bed. And wrapping his hands around the hot ceramic, drinking in the aromatic steam, Remus could almost forget that he was alone, at least for a little while.

Yes, tea was a necessity.

No one let him budge into the queue this time. No one seemed to notice him at all. Remus stood with his selections heavy in his arms, perspiring in the warmth of the shop after the chill of the street, his mind empty of any tangible thought. His temples still throbbed. He knew he was swaying where he stood. When at last he stepped up to the counter, he laid his burden down clumsily, fumbling in his pocket for the coins as the clerk recited his total.

Not until he was once more out on the pavement of Diagon Alley did he realise how weak he was.

His breathing was laboured, hitching painfully on the inhale. Every muscle in his body was stretched taut between its moorings, quivering finely. His arms ached already with the weight of his purchases. He should have been able to Shrink them, to tuck both sacks and the tea into one pocket for easy transport. He did not dare to pull out his wand. He could not squander magic on this, nor on drying his robes, which were still soaked through on the right side and had by now chilled him to the bone. Any shred of strength he had left to him would be needed for the journey back to Yorkshire. And he could not wait very long. The moon would rise in a few short hours, and he had to be safely away from the city well in advance.

But if he tried to Disapparate, he would surely Splinch himself. He had to rest first. Dimly Remus intended to walk back to the Leaky Cauldron. He started in that direction well enough, but after only a few yards he was shaking violently, the ominous black blobs and brilliant pinions of light swimming in his vision again. He had to sit down. It was sit down or fall down, and he had already fainted in the street once today.

Remus looked around frantically, hoping to see one of the wrought-iron benches that were set at intervals up and down the length of Diagon Alley. There wasn't one nearby. He could not sink down on one of the doorsteps, or he would be an obstruction to the custom of the shop. That was asking to be stepped on, or driven off. Anxiously he looked for any other option. And he saw the stairs of the bank.

The broad marble steps that led up to the pillared façade of Gringotts were only about twenty paces ahead. They were sweeping steps, graciously curved and spread across the entire breadth of the ancient edifice. On those stairs, he would be no impediment to anyone: there was plenty of room to navigate around him. People sat on the bank steps frequently. They were a favourite meeting-place for students during the busy weeks at the end of the summer when Hogwarts pupils flocked to Diagon Alley with their families, buying robes and books and school supplies. Surely no one would think it odd if Remus sat there…

His legs were rubbery by the time he reached the stairs. He took the first two clumsily, and sank down upon the third, laying his sacks of beans and oats beside him on the age-worn marble. The stone was very cold beneath him, the chill seeping through his cloak and the seat of his robes. He did not care. He drew up his knees and curled his arms around them, bowing his head low to rest in that simple shelter. Remus tried to suck in deep, steady breaths, _in through the nose, out through the mouth_. He tried to calm himself, to collect himself, to gather the last shreds of his strength for the journey home.

He had to find the wherewithal to Apparate. The one functioning fireplace in the cottage was not on the Floo Network. It was far too dangerous. A slip of the tongue might send an innocent traveller tumbling out of the wrong hearth, and if that happened on the night of the full moon it would be catastrophic. Besides, the connection charge and the monthly maintenance fee were far beyond Remus's means. And he wasn't even really supposed to be living in the cottage, not in any legal sense…

His thoughts were rambling again. He feared he might faint. He prayed he would not. He modulated his breathing, emptied his mind, knew he would not. But he knew something else as well. He could not Apparate in this state. He would Splinch himself, without a doubt. And then he would bleed to death anyhow, whether the wolf had been fed or no. A flutter of panic rose in his throat, but far more tangible was his exhausted despair.

He had to get home. He had to secure himself. In far too few short hours, he would turn into a ravening monster. A convulsive shiver ran down his aching spine and he buried his face deeper against the patched knees of his robes. What was he going to do?


	3. Part Three

_Note: I'm behind in my correspondence, but your review replies are coming! Thank you to all my wonderful readers, and especially the anonymous ones who I cannot thank personally! I simply had to post, because it seemed too cruel to leave Remus sitting on those steps any longer than I had to…_

 _Also, I know the security in Gringotts is insane. But having an unguarded space in the vestibule is a matter of customer service._

 **In Desperate Manner: Part Three**

Remus subsisted in an agonising space of hazy awareness, ribcage heaving with the effort of drawing breath, all too cognizant of the fact that at any moment he might lose the battle with his beleaguered body and faint away after all. The sounds of the street around him seemed louder than before, battering his ears and intensifying his throbbing headache. There was a deep stinging in his long bones now, and the pain in his hands and his jaw was maddening. He knew he was running short on time, that he had to get up, to get out of here, to find some way back to his poor little sanctuary on the moors, but he could not move. He dared not even raise his head. Hot waves of sickness swelled and broke over him, each one leaving him more wretchedly chilled than the last.

Feet in whole, sturdy shoes clopped past him, darting up and down the stairs of the bank. Now and then the corner of someone's cloak would brush against his side. No one stopped, no one paused. Perhaps they did not notice him. Perhaps they did not care. It did not much matter to Remus which was the case. He was grateful that they passed by. He could not bear the kindness of strangers now, when he was so blisteringly aware of the truth that would drive them to revile him if they even suspected.

He screwed his eyes tightly closed, flinching as someone passed too near. Diagon Alley was busier now than it had been that morning. Already the crowds were winding him up to the breaking point. Already the mass of humanity around him was too much to bear.

There was a heavy footfall on the pavement, followed by an equally weighty _clump_ and, a moment later, a crisp _tap_. The sequence of sounds was strange, unlike the rhythm of all the other pedestrians around him, and Remus's brain snagged on the unfamiliar stimulus. He buried his face more deeply in his arms, arms that quaked to the very marrow with cold and fever and the strain of approaching moonrise. _Thump, clump, tap_ : there it was again.

And again, the quality of the sound changing a little as flagstones were traded for marble and whoever-it-was mounted the first step of the bank. Something was niggling at the back of Remus's mind, half-lost in the fog of misery. That sound. He knew that sound. He ought to know that sound.

'Lupin? That you?'

The voice was gruff, stern, demanding. Remus's first instinct was to shrink away as if from an accusation or the threat of a blow. The muscles of his arms and legs twitched reflexively, but they lacked either the strength or the will to actually move him. Instead he raised his head from his arms, feeling a swarm of nausea swirl behind his eyes as he did so. He did not dare to actually lift it, to look up at the shape looming darkly over him. He let his gaze slide to the broadly planted feet instead.

One leather boot, well-worn and scuffed but sturdy and expensively made, with a buckle across the ankle and several more running up the length of the shaft to snug it up to a perfect fit. The other foot was what told Remus all he needed to know. It was carven wood, not flesh: an ornate but ominous, clawed thing that gleamed with tung oil where it was not spattered with mud. A little further along, the base of a stout walking-stick was braced firmly on the step.

Slowly, Remus dared to lift his gaze, bleary, stinging eyes searching out a scarred and curse-pocked face, grizzled hair, and a keen, penetrating gaze. _Penetrating_ in more than the spiritual sense, for though one eye was living and natural the other was a shrill electric blue, bulging in its socket and rolling independent of its partner as it raked down the curve of Remus's spine and the forgiving folds of his shabby cloak.

'Alastor,' Remus croaked.

He would not have wished to be seen like this by anyone he had known in the old days. Those who remembered him as he had been – young, intelligent, skilled, always engaged in his work for the Order, always useful, so good to have at your back in a duel that even those members of the Order of the Phoenix who had loathed the idea of a werewolf in their midst would seek him out for the most dangerous missions – would not know what to make of him now. And especially today, when he had bled away his humanity for eight meagre Galleons, when he had scarfed down half a pound of raw stewing meat in a butcher's alleyway, when he had failed even to help one of his own kind find a safe place to transform. The last shreds of living warmth left Remus's limbs, even as a ball of molten mortification burned in his chest.

'How good of you to remember,' Alastor Moody said dryly. His living eye flicked up from Remus's face as someone passed behind him, bound for the bank doors. The artificial eye, the one that could see through doors and walls and bone, whirled up into his head as it made a panoramic sweep of the street. 'What are you doing here?'

There was probably no accusation in those words, but Remus heard one anyway. He felt shrivelled with shame, remembering what he had done. But his arm flopped to his side, making his cloak fall open and exposing his drenched robes to the cold air again. He groped for his parcels, tilting his head faintly towards them in place of a nod. 'I bought…' he mumbled, but his throat was dry and his mouth tasted of copper and gall, and he could not finish the thought anyway.

Suddenly Moody was crouching beside him, his false leg braced determinedly against the rise of the next step. One hand gripped the shaft of his walking stick for much-needed balance, but the other slapped down across Remus's brow. It was an inefficient way to gauge a fever, being more a more reliable measure of the relative difference between the temperature of your own palm and the thing you were touching than anything else, but it was a gesture of no-nonsense control and so perfectly suited to Moody's manner.

'You're hot,' he observed bluntly. 'You look wretched. What's the matter with you?'

A harsh huff of air broke from Remus's lips – not quite the bitter laugh the question warranted, perhaps, but all that he had in him at the moment. But shame swamped bitterness very swiftly and he hung his head, slipping free of Moody's palm. The Auror withdrew his hand half a dozen inches, tellingly unsure. No one ever knew what to make of a werewolf, however open-minded they were about the business.

There was no putting off Alastor Moody, though. Remus knew that from long experience. If he tried, the man would only mount a full investigation into the matter, not stopping until every last, awful truth had been brought to light. Thankfully there was one answer he could offer, simple and straightforward enough, that would put paid to any further questions.

'The moon,' Remus rasped, praying that no one else was near, that no one had paused to listen to these two strange figures as they spoke on the steps of Gringotts. 'It's… full… tonight.'

Moody made a sound in the back of his throat, sharp and comprehending, yet somehow neither startled nor repulsed. 'I see,' he said, his gruff tone unchanged. 'That would account for it, I suppose.'

Remus nodded. It was a mistake. A wave of dizziness broke over him and he swayed where he sat. The strong, calloused hand reached out to brace him, gripping Remus's shoulder. There was a faint squelch of wet cloth. A convulsive shiver ran through Remus's body.

'You're wet,' Moody said shortly. He closed his fingers briefly on Remus's forearm, then patted his chest with a splayed palm. 'You're soaked to the skin. Are you mad, boy, sitting out in the cold with your robes in that state? You'll catch your death!'

Before Remus could speak, to defend himself or demur against his misery or offer some half-hatched explanation that did not involve swooning into the gutter of Knockturn Alley, Moody had his wand in his hand. He muttered an incantation, and Remus felt a sudden radiating warmth up and down the length of his body. Wisps of steam and a faint odour of soggy cloth rose from his garments, and his robes were suddenly dry.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask the man to cast a Warming Charm on his clothing as well, but Remus caught himself just in time. That was not the sort of favour you asked of an old acquaintance upon the occasion of your first meeting in years. It was a relief enough not to be sopping with icy water, he told himself, even as he had to clench his jaw against teeth that wanted very much to chatter. He reached with brittle fingers to tug his cloak back over his exposed shoulder, unable to resist the urge to hug the worn cloth tightly to him.

'Do you have business in the bank?' asked Moody. 'I was just going in. Payday. Doesn't do to keep gold lying about: asking for trouble.'

Payday. Remus could not help but feel a little twinge of envy at the word. He quashed it. Alastor was a respected Auror, a war hero, one of the pillars of law and order propping up wizarding society. He had a right to earn a comfortable living. A werewolf did not, and there was an end to it. There was no use in coveting what he could not have.

'I would've thought you'd feel more comfortable keeping your money under the hearthstones,' he said instead, trying feebly to jest. 'If you want something done right…'

His voice and the thought trailed off together. Alastor snorted.

'I'd sooner trust a goblin than a wizard with my money any day,' he said. 'You know where you stand with goblins. Give them their fee, and they're faithful to the end.'

He straightened up, leaning heavily on his stick as he did so. 'Are you coming?' he asked again.

Remus had come staggering to this place with no thought other than to sit down and let his fainting fit pass. He certainly had not had any intention of transacting business in the bank. But now, faced with the prospect of abandoning this fleeting opportunity for conversation, for genuine human interaction, he could not bear to admit that he had no reason to go inside. His other agonies suddenly paled before the ache of loneliness. He would follow Moody anywhere, he realised pathetically, if it meant the other man would talk to him a little while longer, make one of his gruff, deadpan jokes, perhaps even grip his arm again.

And there was something he could do in the bank after all. Something that might have occurred to him to do anyway, if his mind were not so scrambled with want of food and lack of blood and the drag of the coming transformation.

'I need to change some money,' he breathed, pretext taking on the shade of truth. If he exchanged a couple of his Galleons for pound notes, he would be able to buy food far closer to home. He would be able to conserve his strength and cut down on his travel as he recovered from the full moon. And he could buy some of those horrible, packaged Muggle foodstuffs that were unappetising and far too salty but so much less costly than fresh, wholesome foods.

'Right, then, let's get out of this damp,' said Moody, offering his hand. Remus hesitated for a moment before taking it. Alastor had never shown the aversion to touching him that so many exhibited when they knew the truth – as if lycanthropy could be transmitted like a head cold, from hand to hand. All the same, it had crossed his mind in other vulnerable moments before this that the Auror was merely being kind in his own grim, standoffish way and he shouldn't take advantage.

But he wasn't sure he could get to his feet unaided, and he caved to the offer of help. He had to tug rather harder than he had hoped upon the other man's arm, and his legs trembled perilously as he got them beneath him. But Moody was a rock, unwavering and immovable, and soon Remus was standing on the marble steps, shivering and lightheaded but upright at last.

He had to stoop down again to retrieve his frugal purchases. He wasn't about to let Moody do it, not balancing on a wooden leg as he was, and it wasn't until he had the sacks of oats and beans in the crook of his arm that it occurred to Remus that either one of them – well, Alastor, at least – could have simply used a wand.

He was swaying worse than before when he straightened at last, but Moody stumped around to his other side, guiding him as he turned and offering an arm to lean against as they climbed the stairs. Remus took it gladly, as hungry for the simple contact as he was desperate for the support.

'Been a long time,' Moody said when they had climbed a few more steps. 'Since we saw each other last, I mean. Eight years?'

'Eight,' Remus whispered, not trusting himself to nod. It had been almost exactly eight years, less a few weeks, since the day he had collected Alastor from the Spell-Damage Ward at St Mungo's hospital. Then, the magic eye had been a recent acquisition. Then, it had been Moody who had needed an arm to lean on, still grappling with vertigo as he adjusted to the all-seeing device. At the time, Remus had wondered why, of all the people who would have gladly come to fetch him, Moody had sent for a werewolf. A grief-stricken werewolf at that, so crippled by anguish and bewildered betrayal that he had been hard-pressed to care for himself, much less anyone else. But he had come when he received the letter. Of course he had.

They were at the door now, and Moody released Remus's arm to haul it open. The warm place where his hand had been throbbed, and Remus was suddenly freshly aware of the pulsing sting in the crook of his other elbow. The place where the apothecary had lanced his vein was hard and aching now, and he did not need to pull back his sleeve to know that there would be a goose-egg-sized bruise there. The bleeding had stopped when he fell on his bent arm in Knockturn Alley, and that was what mattered.

'Hurry up,' Moody grunted, jerking his head to indicate that Remus should clear the threshold. 'Day's wasting.'

Those words tightened the knot of dread in Remus's chest. He hurried into the bank, caring less for the traffic he might be holding up than he did for his first anxious glimpse of the clock over the row of ornate wickets. Five past two. He had less than three hours now.

The door clanged shut. Remus was standing helplessly in the middle of the grand vestibule. His head was swimming, partly from the exertion of climbing the steps and partly from the magnitude of his problem. He knew Apparation was out of the question. He had to keep reminding himself that Apparation was out of the question, or he would cave to the desperation of his need and try it. But the thought filled him with panic. What was he going to do?

'Alastor…' he began, trying to look around for the Auror. But the motion was too much for his swimming head, and he reeled.

Two strong arms caught him this time, the walking stick clattering to the ground with an echo that seemed to fill the splendid space. Remus's eyes fogged perilously for a moment, then cleared. He found himself staring into Moody's mismatched ones, the brows above them now furrowed with worry.

'You're not well, Lupin!' he snapped. To Remus's ears, it sounded like an accusation. But Alastor was looking away from him now, head turned sharply. 'You! Pick up my stick and give us a hand.'

A passing wizard, stocky and rather bookish, jumped at the tone of command. He scurried to retrieve Moody's walking stick, and took uncertain hold of Remus's arm as the Auror snatched his staff. Together, the two men guided him to one of the ornate benches that sheltered between the marble pillars supporting the gallery above. Remus tried to sit with some measure of grace, but his knees gave out almost at the sight of the bench and he sagged down upon it. He still had the two sacks and the packet of tea in his arms, and Moody snatched them away before they could fall. He set them squarely next to Remus's hip, and waved a dismissive hand at the other wizard.

'You can go,' he said shortly.

'Thank you for your kindness,' Remus breathed, the words tripping out almost automatically, even though he didn't feel strong enough to speak.

The bookish man hurried off, brushing his hands on his robes and stealing anxious glances back over his shoulder as if he was not quite sure what he had just been caught up in, but he fervently hoped this was the end of it.

'You need to sit here and gather your senses,' Moody said gruffly, tugging Remus's cloak to fold it around him. It covered his patched old robes, and afforded a little more warmth to his trembling body. The air inside Gringotts was drier and not so biting as the air in the street, but it was far from cosy. Cool and spectacular: that was the impression the goblins wanted. Remus hugged his thin arms to his hitching ribs and tried to nod.

'Give me the money,' said Moody.

'What?' The question was a plaintive puff of air. Remus did not understand.

'The money, boy. The money you need changing. I'll see to it for you, of course: no sense in dragging yourself all the way up to the window just to drag yourself back again.' Moody held out his strong hand, broad palm upturned.

Dazedly, Remus fished in his inner pocket. His fingers closed on the coins, an unfamiliar weight against him. He drew out two Galleons and gave them to Moody, then hesitated before tugging out a third. 'Thank you,' he whispered, but the Auror was already gone.

He was back almost before Remus knew it. At first, he thought he had drifted into a stupor or perhaps even the first indistinct phase of exhausted slumber, but an anxious glance at the clock set him straight. Moody hadn't been gone more than five minutes. He must have marched straight to the head of the queue and cut in. Remus didn't suppose many patrons would want to pick an argument with Mad-Eye Moody, renowned Dark Wizard hunter and champion of justice. Even those few who might not know his face from the countless articles _The Daily Prophet_ had run over the span of his illustrious career would surely take one look at his scarred, wilful countenance and lose all interest in quarrelling.

'Right. Here you are,' Moody said. He handed Remus a small sheaf of colourful pound notes. When he had folded them and tucked them mechanically away, the Auror dropped a few coins into his palm. They were almost comically light, tiny and fragile like currency for a doll's house. Remus pocketed them with care, remembering just how long he could live on a twenty-pence piece if he had to.

'Today's exchange is six pounds fourpence the Galleon, whatever that means,' said Moody. 'Goblin wouldn't bargain, and he wouldn't tell me whether that's a good rate or a bad one.'

'It's good,' Remus said hoarsely. Six pounds fourpence the Galleon meant he had… he had… he didn't know. He couldn't work through the math. Simple, simple math, and it was beyond his grasp. His eyelids fluttered low, dragged as if by lead weights. Dimly he remembered that something more was owed. 'Th-thank you, Alastor.'

'Hmph.' Moody stumped off to the side. For a horrible moment Remus thought he would leave him, but he only moved up the bench, turned around with a broad certainty that dispelled any sense of clumsiness, and sat heavily down. 'Best if you sit a little longer, I think. You're grey as old cheese.'

Remus did not say anything. It was such a relief to be off his feet again, this time with his back bolstered up by the intricately carved mahogany. He let his head sink forward so that his chin rested in the notch of his collarbone. He dragged in slow breaths, laboured but increasingly steady. _In through the nose, out through the mouth_.

'Never used to affect you like this, the moon,' Alastor muttered, speaking the last words out of the corner of his mouth. Remus supposed it was surprising that he spoke them at all. Moody had always been a stickler for security, and that included security of information. He was the one who had taught them all what could and could not be written down, even in code: what could not be hinted at where others might hear. He was the one who had insisted that the Order cease using owls for their privileged communications. That had caused an uproar, because of course the Floo Network wasn't secure either, and they had needed _some_ means of contacting each other long-distance.

They had found a workaround in the end. Well, _Remus_ had found a workaround. Sometimes he still felt a warm burst of pride when he remembered that. No one else – not Professor Dumbledore with his vast talents, nor Professor Flitwick with his world-renowned skill in charms, nor Marlene McKinnon with her penchant for impossible riddles, nor even James and Lily and Sirius with their brilliant minds – had contrived a solution. But when Remus had found a way to make their Patronuses speak, the Order's communication problem had dissolved.

A small sound of suffering hitched in the back of Remus's throat, snagging against the parched passage and emerging only as a dry little _click_. Sirius. He had failed to guard his mind against the name, and now it struck him with the force of a Death Eater's Stunner. Sirius.

'The Battle of Nomansland Common,' Moody was musing, mercifully spared the dark and muddled thoughts now swirling through Remus's aching head. 'That was the afternoon before, wasn't it? I remember when it was over Black kept trying to leap out from cover before the area was secure. Had to Apparate you off to a safe place, he did. You'd worn yourself out fighting, but even then you didn't look like this.'

'It's… the years haven't been kind,' Remus murmured desolately, not knowing what else to say. The memory of Sirius so agitated, risking his own life to whisk Remus off to safety, was unbearable.

Moody huffed appreciatively. 'That's the truth,' he agreed. 'I feel every one of 'em in my bones these days. Don't know how much longer I'll keep it up. Auroring. I could always cut back on the active duty and work with the trainees, I suppose.' He sighed as if this prospect held little appeal. He twisted on the bench, looking at Remus more squarely with his living eye. The other made another sweep of their surroundings. 'Tell me what you need, Lupin, and I'll do what I can.'

The statement was so blunt, so pragmatic and unemotional, that at first Remus did not understand what Moody had said. Then it penetrated his tempestuous brain and all at once he could not think at all. What he needed… a thousand things, great and small, flooded his mind all at once. He needed steady, reliable work, preferably something that was not too physically taxing, though at the moment he would have been content to be strapped to a plough like an ox, if only it paid. He needed a cupboard full of good, wholesome food: fresh fruit and meat, tinned goods, spices, soup bones and flour and a twenty-pound sack of potatoes. He needed roofing slate and the skill to install it. He needed a new blanket, one that wasn't worn thin and motheaten. He needed shoes that didn't let in the water, robes that were presentable enough to make him look like a trustworthy employment prospect, warm woollen socks and undergarments that were more than just webs of ragged cloth. He needed shampoo, toothpaste, proper laundry soap, a saucepan with its handle still attached. He needed potions for pain and fever and blood loss, needed a paraffin heater for those times when he was too weak in the wake of the moon to conjure up a fire or cast a Warming Charm on his narrow slat bed. He needed so many things that he had once taken for granted and now lived without.

He couldn't articulate any of this. Wouldn't have done even if he could. It was not Moody's worry how he was living. It wasn't Moody's responsibility to provide for him. But there was one thing that truly would be Moody's problem if it went too long unattended. Moody's problem, and that of every normal witch and wizard, every normal _human being_ , for miles around.

'I need…' Remus said, his voice trembling with the awfulness of the admission and all that it implied. 'I need help to get home.'

 _discidium_

For an indeterminate age, Moody sat there in silence. The clock ticked and the wickets rattled. Piles of coin sang and clattered in nimble goblin hands. A vault door creaked. Far away there was a ratchetting rattle that could only be a mine car building speed. All manner of voices chattered, some irritated, some bored, some friendly. Remus wanted to shrink to nothing, to slink away from the Auror's steady gaze. How could he have been such a fool, to come down to London on the day of the full moon? How could he have let himself grow so weak that he could not even get home? How could he have let it all come to this?

'Well, then,' said Moody at last; 'we'd best get you home. You can't Apparate, that's plain enough. Floo?'

Remus shook his head, regretting it as the sickening, tilting feeling took the world again. 'Not on the Network,' he said. 'Too risky.'

Moody nodded appreciatively. He was a man who respected a sound risk-assessment. 'Sensible,' he said. 'Good of you to put the safety of strangers over your personal convenience, Lupin. You always were a responsible sort.'

It was a compliment, but it felt like a blistering criticism. How responsible had he been today? He had let his hunger and his longing to survive override his better judgement. He had put himself in a position that no werewolf ever should: the very position that James had been wont to rail against in the old days, back before the Animagus transformation and all that had come with it. He had left himself with nowhere safe to secure himself when the inhuman madness took him.

'Simple enough,' said Moody. 'I'll take you. Side-Along. Still have that flat in Lancaster?'

Had he possessed the strength, Remus might have been surprised into a laugh by that. The flat in Lancaster – in truth a sorry little bedsit overlooking a rubbish-choked vacant lot – had been lost long ago. Without his friends' support, Remus had not managed to hold onto it for even half a year. He hadn't wanted to stay there, not after all that had happened. Not when he couldn't even walk down the high street a quarter mile from his room without seeing that vast dark square of new pavement where the Muggles thought a gas line had exploded and remembering… everything. He wouldn't have clung to the lease so fiercely, desperately trying to scrape up the rent every month, except that he hadn't the gold for first and last's on a new place, not without James's money behind him.

James's money, which had always before come in a neat leather pouch pressed into his hands with a thoughtful word and no question of refusal, had been brought to him by proxy near the end. By proxy, because Remus could no longer remember where James and Lily lived, had no idea where they might have gone after the grand house at Godric Manor had fallen to Fiendfyre, no idea where he had visited them all those times, eaten so many hot dinners, enjoyed two blissful Christmases. The memories had been vivid, wonderful, sustaining to him in dark moments through the last months of the war, but they had been strangely incomplete after James and Lily went into hiding, with a vast gaping hole where his knowledge of the location should have been. The effects of the Fidelius Charm had been immediate and disorienting – almost as much as the effects of its breaking had been.

'Well?' said Moody, and Remus realised he had lapsed into that mournful reverie without answering the question. Now he could not recall what the question had been. 'Lancaster?'

Oh. 'No…' Remus mumbled, clamping down on the instinct to shake his pulsing head. 'No, I'm… it's a cottage…'

'Have you a picture?' asked Moody. 'I don't Apparate blind: you know that, Lupin. Sure recipe for disaster.'

Remus did not have a picture. Where would he have gotten a picture? It wasn't as though he had gone through an estate agent's. And anyway, it never would have occurred to him to carry such a thing around with him. He did shake his head now, hopelessly.

'Knight Bus, then,' Moody said briskly, dusting off the lap of his robes and picking up his staff. He was in the process of heaving himself to his feet when Remus's answer made him sink back.

'I can't,' Remus croaked.

Moody glared at him. 'If it's the money that worries you, I'll front you the fare,' he said. 'Got to get you home safely, unless you want to spend the night locked up in the bowels of the Ministry. I wouldn't advise it. No way of knowing who you'll get at intake, or who'll let you out in the morning. Bad business, falling afoul of the wrong bloke in the Beast Division. Seen lives ruined that way, I have.'

At the moment it was difficult to imagine his life any more ruinous, but Remus knew Moody was right. To turn to the Ministry for help in securing himself would be to admit he was too incapable and irresponsible to do it on his own. He would be branded a negligent werewolf, and that would haunt him all the rest of his days.

'It's not the fare,' he said softly, though the thought of such a prodigal outpouring of money made him sick. 'The Knight Bus is too slow. It would take hours. I… it rises just before five o'clock.'

There was a moment's silence as Moody unpacked this statement. His real eye was fixed on Remus, pensive. The other pivoted to the side, staring through his temple at the clock on the wall.

'Well, then, I'll need your address,' he said at last.

'Haven't got an address,' Remus sighed. 'It's a cottage, on the moors. In… in the Dales National Park.'

'Name of the cottage, then,' said Moody. 'The Ministry's triangulation service can work off a name.'

Ministry's triangulation service? Something about that phrase made Remus feel uneasy, but he had a more pressing piece of information to communicate.

'Hasn't got a name,' he whispered. He wasn't trying to be obstreperous, truly he was not. But his thoughts were clumsy and hobbled, and just trying to get the words to his lips required an enormous effort.

'Well, how am I supposed to find it, then?' Moody demanded. 'How did you register the property?'

'I didn't,' Remus confessed, feeling another gnawing shudder of humiliation through his viscera. 'I didn't buy it, I don't let it. I just… I live there.'

'It's a squat,' said Moody bluntly, clarifying.

'Yes,' Remus whispered, unable to nod, unable to meet the other man's eyes. He felt the need to explain. 'It was abandoned. It's not worth anything. There are hundreds of cottages like it, all over Yorkshire. When the population collapsed in the… I-I'm not taking anything anyone else would want.'

It was a feeble defence, a pitiable protest. He couldn't afford to eat: there was never any money for shelter. The pittance that his father had to his name at his death had all gone for the burial. And Remus had struggled for years before he found the little cottage, derelict and empty on land owned by the Crown. That drab bedsit in Lancaster had only been the first of increasingly untenable options, until one grim spring when he had found himself with nowhere to go at all.

'You've a right to put a roof over your head, Lupin: how you do it makes no difference to me,' said Moody. 'The question is how we get you back there. Without an address or any idea where I'm going – I don't suppose you know the coordinates?'

'No.' Remus could only mouth the word. All the despair and misery that had overwhelmed him in the street was cresting high again.

'Somewhere nearby, then?' Moody pressed, undaunted. 'A neighbour? A crossroads? A landmark?'

He was using his Auror voice, his interrogation voice: tripping from one option to the next so quickly that one felt compelled to dredge up an answer just to stop the barrage.

'Thwaite Bridge,' Remus said, even before he knew he had thought of an answer. He looked up in surprise, tricked into meeting Moody's eyes again. His own widened a little, and he felt rather breathless. 'Thwaite Bridge, off the A684. Over the River Ure.'

'All right, then,' said Moody. He looked around as if searching for something, frowned when he didn't see it, then fished in his robes. He brought out a small slip of parchment: the receipt for the deposit he had left with the goblins. Left it with the goblins instead of depositing it in his vault personally, Remus thought. That seemed out of character for Moody. Had he interrupted a busy day for the Auror?

It occurred to him that perhaps Moody had not liked the idea of leaving him alone in such a state.

'Thwaite Bridge, off the A684,' muttered the older wizard, setting the piece of parchment on the seat between them. His magical eye was making a steady sweep, but it seemed to see nothing of concern, because Moody tapped his wand to the paper and said, ' _Portus_.'

The piece of parchment glowed briefly blue, then faded back into unremarkableness. For the first time since sinking onto the bench, Remus found the strength to sit up straight, choking on his consternation.

'You can't do that!' he cried, horrified. 'That's illegal! The penalty if you're caught—'

'Quiet, boy, don't make a scene,' Moody said briskly, tucking away his wand. He glared at a witch who had just come through the doors and was staring at Remus. She wilted under the Auror's gaze and trotted away. 'What's the Ministry going to do? Send Shacklebolt to arrest me? Hah!'

He got to his feet and socked Remus's groceries into the crook of the arm that held his stick. With the other he grabbed Remus by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He left him there, swaying, as he snatched up the paper. 'Grab hold, now, and don't be stubborn,' snapped Moody, so imperiously that Remus was compelled to obey. 'Right, then, brace yourself. Four, three, two, one…'

The unearthly feeling of a hook pulling him from behind the navel seized Remus, and Gringotts melted away around them as the Portkey took effect.


	4. Part Four

**In Desperate Manner – Part Four**

The impact of his feet hitting the ground jarred up into Remus's knees and hips with ferocious force. The shock of it, and the sudden flaring pain, startled the air from his lungs with a low moan of misery. His legs gave out from under him and he reached out frantically for something to hold onto. His palm grazed the weatherworn top of a low stone wall and he crumpled against it, clutching the frosty surface and trying to get his feet back under him.

Beside him, Alastor Moody had dropped the slip of parchment and whipped out his wand. He was doing a tight, swift sweep of the area, his boot propelling him in a jerky circle while his eye rotated at twice the speed. Remus screwed his own eyes closed as his insides clenched with nausea. Hot, acidic sludge rose in the back of his throat, tasting strongly of flesh. He choked it back, refusing to give in to the urge to purge himself of his pitiful meal. He had always had a good stomach for Portkey travel, but it seemed that on top of everything else today it was just a little too much.

'All clear!' Moody said crisply. 'You can put your wand away, Lupin. I've got the matter well in hand.'

Remus had not even reached for his wand. He was still struggling to keep from sinking to his knees in the puddle of mucky slush pooled at the bottom of the bridge. They had arrived precisely where he would have envisioned, on the east end just past the turn-in to the main road. They were sheltered from the motorway by the lie of the land, and below them the sleepy River Ure was choked with ice.

The air was crisp and bitterly cold after the London damp, and Remus's lungs ached. He finally managed to make his knees lock, and stood bowed over the stone wall, still clinging to it. His hair had fallen into his eyes again.

'Here, now,' said Moody, far less fiercely. He propped his stick against the wall and plunked the two five-pound sacks down atop it. He put a calloused hand on each of Remus's shoulders, his wand still clamped between thumb and forefinger, eternally at the ready. 'Rough journey? Sorry 'bout that. Portkey's not the best way to go when you're feeling poorly, but in the circumstances it was the best we could do.'

Remus nodded, regretted it, and swallowed back another urge to vomit. 'I know,' he rasped. 'I'm grateful. I—I'll be all right in a minute.'

Moody was looking past his slumped shoulders. 'This your place?' he asked, jerking his chin across the bridge. 'Awfully well-kept for a squat.'

Remus stole a glance in that direction, though he knew what he would see. There was a cottage there, cosy in a hollow of the land. It was far grander than the one he occupied had ever been, with two storeys and half a dozen chimneypots. It still had its entire roof, too, which was a condition much to be envied. 'Muggles,' Remus whispered, running a dry tongue over cracking lips. 'I'm a little farther on.'

'How much farther?' asked Moody. 'You'll pardon me saying so, Lupin, but you don't look up to much of a walk.'

'Ten miles,' Remus murmured. 'More or less. North-northwest. I… I just need to catch my breath.'

Alastor tightened his grip and lifted Remus's bowed back away from the wall. He led him down the slope to where the stones dropped down, stepwise, to about the height of a chair. Remus sank down gratefully, not caring for the wet that seeped through the seat of his garments. He propped his elbows on his knees and buried his head in both hands.

'Is a Reviving Spell any use in these situations?' Moody asked. He was looming over Remus, and he stumped around to the other side so that his cloak and broad shoulders cut the icy wind snaking down from the moors. This small consideration made Remus's throat feel very tight.

'None at all, I'm afraid,' he said. James had tried it once, reasoning that the spell that so effectively countered a simple Stunner might rouse an unconscious werewolf. In the end, his friends had been obliged to resort to the old Victorian standbys: a cool cloth and much patting of the wrists.

'Ten miles,' said Moody. 'I make it a point never to tell another wizard what he's capable of, Lupin, but if you're up for walking ten miles, I'll eat my leg.'

There was no need for that. Remus knew he could never hope to cover such a distance by foot in his present state, and certainly not in the time left to him. 'If I can gather my wits, I can Apparate,' he said.

Moody snorted loudly at this. 'You'll Splinch yourself six ways,' he said.

'Is there any other choice?' asked Remus thickly. He wished Moody would stop arguing with him. He had no strength for a debate. 'It's only ten miles. I've travelled farther wounded.'

Wounded, yes, but never so weak. He had not expected the loss of two pints of blood to affect him so perniciously. Everything around him seemed muffled by a thick fog, or perhaps a web of cotton wool. His weakened pulse was rushing in his ears. Again he thought he might faint.

'That sounds like bravado to me, Lupin,' said Moody, fluffing out one side of his coat to broaden the windbreak. 'Horrid cold up here, isn't it? Not much shelter from the gales, either.'

Remus did not feel the need to expound upon the climatic challenges of the Yorkshire moors. Moody himself lived farther north: he was no stranger to winter's vicissitudes. Trying to fill the silence, most likely. Well, he would have to do that on his own. Remus had no strength for small talk.

'Why did you do it?' asked Moody after several beats of silence.

'How's that?' Remus huffed, not understanding the question.

'Leave home at all today, if you're feeling so sickly?' Moody said. 'You had to know the moon's full tonight – or is it the sort of thing a body might forget?'

A _person_ might forget it, Remus supposed, though in twenty-five years of transformations he never had. A _body_ , though? Never. A body felt it in every joint, in every bone, in the teeth, in the tendons, in the lungs and the heart and the bowels. Some months were worse than others, affected by several factors including the condition of the werewolf's human form and the closeness of the moon to the earth. But always there were at least two days of malaise and befuddlement. Sometimes more.

'I had to go to London,' he said. It was a feeble explanation, but it was all he had. 'I needed… things.'

'Things.' Moody seemed to consider this. His living eye was staring off into the middle distance. His magic eye was scanning the motorway. 'Quiet stretch of road,' he said. 'Not a bad place to pop suddenly into existence, apart from that house. Ministry might even approve. But you're sure there's no landmark closer to home?'

'Nothing that would be on a map,' murmured Remus. 'That's part of the… part of… part…'

'Part of the reason you picked the place,' Moody said knowingly. 'Off in the middle of nowhere, less chance of anyone stumbling across it at an inopportune time.'

Remus made a soft noise of agreement. 'I've taken precautions,' he promised. 'Muggle-Repelling charms, protective wards. I always lock myself in. But sometimes…'

'Sometimes the simplest security measures are the best,' said Alastor appreciatively. 'I taught you that.'

He had taught them all that. Green out of Hogwarts, spoilt by the castle's ancient protections, they had been obliged to learn how to secure their homes against intruders and unwanted visitors. In that, at least, Peter had been the quickest study. Ironic, since Remus had been the one with the greatest incentive to learn.

'You taught us a great deal,' Remus murmured, hoping Moody understood this for the expression of earnest thanks it was.

The Auror grunted matter-of-factly. After a moment, he said; 'Must be hard, going on without them. Alone. I'm sorry, Lupin. You don't know how sorry I am.'

Remus did not know if this was just an expression of condolence for the losses of years ago, or some deeper apology. Either way, it made his throat tighten and his bleary eyes sting. 'We all lost people we loved in the war,' he whispered.

'Yes,' said Moody. 'But you lost everyone. And those that didn't die or worse have fallen away through the years, haven't they?'

A bone-deep shudder wracked Remus's body. He was haunted every day by memories of his dearest friends, his blood-brothers and sweet, faithful Lily, but there were so many others. Dorcas Meadowes, lying as if in sleep, untouched save by the Killing Curse that had snuffed out a life so brimming with greatness. Gideon and Fabian, cut down in the end after striving to hold their own against five of Voldemort's most accomplished duellists. Frank and Alice Longbottom, two more living a fate worse than death, condemned to an eternity in their own broken minds as surely as Sirius was condemned to the torments of Azkaban—

He had done it again. He had let himself think of Sirius. A harsh hitch of breath that was not quite a sob ignited a dozen fires of protest in the joints of his ribcage. Suddenly, spasmodically, he launched to his feet. He swayed perilously, but did not allow himself to fall. Brushing past the hand Moody extended to steady him, he staggered up the slope and onto the bridge again, fumbling for his parcels.

'Lupin, sit down. You're in no fit state—' Moody began.

'I have to… I have to go,' Remus panted. He rammed the little sack of tea into the front of his robes and hoisted the two larger bags. His arms trembled with the effort. A horrible, blindingly painful cramp ripped through the left side of his jaw. He fumbled in the folds of his garments for his wand.

'You'll Splinch yourself. We have to find some other way—'

'There's no time,' Remus argued, shaking his head fervently. Too fervently. The world tilted precariously on its axis. Black spots filled his vision again.

Moody's voice took on an aura of command. 'Put away that wand, boy! Don't be reckless—'

But Remus was focusing all his consciousness and his waning strength on the tumbledown little cottage on the lonely stretch of moor not quite ten miles away. He sucked in a desperate breath that burned in his lungs, and Disapparated with a deafening _crack_.

 _discidium_

 _Reckless. Reckless._

Moody's last word was still ringing in Remus's ears when he popped back into existence half a heartbeat later, ankle-deep in snow and dead moor grasses. Again the sudden impact of earth beneath his feet resounded up into Remus's legs, and this time there was no wall to grope for. Remus stumbled forward in two loose, crumbling strides before crashing to his knees. He had just enough presence of mind to let go of his wand before the heel of his hand thumped into the ground at an angle that would have snapped the slender cypress handle. The two five-pound sacks flew from the crook of his arm and hit the ground. Dimly and distantly Remus heard brown paper tearing and the rattling clatter of the beans as they spilled out over one another, but he was fighting for consciousness and could only curl forward over his lap, gasping for breath.

He did not think he had Splinched himself. All the important pieces of his body seemed to be there, though every single one of them quaked with pain and enervation. _Reckless_ , he thought again. So hideously, madly reckless. As soon as he dared, he raised his head and lifted his eyes, needing to reassure himself that he had struck his mark. If he hadn't, he knew he would not have the strength for a fresh attempt.

But he had. Just up this hill, in the hollow of the next rise, sat the derelict little cottage that he could not help but think of as home. It was a squat, stone structure of the kind found scattered all over this part of the countryside, with the uncared-for look of a place too far gone for even the most attentive hands to put right. Looking at it now, Remus felt an abject gratitude at his homecoming that was equalled only by what he had felt on his first return after settling in the cottage three years before. Then, he had been so wretchedly thankful simply to have a roof over his head again, such as it was. Today, it was the cellar that called to him.

Remus sat back on his ankles, head hanging, and stared helplessly at the mess before him. The burlap sack of oatmeal was still intact, though lying in the wet snow. The beans, however, were scattered in a drift on the ground. Fumbling with the fastening of his cloak, Remus yanked the threadbare garment from his back. He caught up the oatmeal and laid it on a fold of the body, then spread open his hood. As carefully as he could he picked up the torn edges of the bag, shaking as much of the contents back inside as he could. He laid it in the hood, and then began to scoop up loose handfuls of the dry, white beans.

He was too far gone to berate himself as he deserved for his clumsiness, but when he started picking up individual scattered beans with his fingertips, he caught himself.

'Fool,' he whispered, the sound scarcely rippling the frozen air. There was perhaps half a cup of the stuff still scattered on the ground, flecked with snow and muck. One good meal, two or three once he duplicated what he had, but he could not fuss over that now. The grey day was darkening, and if there had been any shadows beneath the low-hanging sky they would have been long and gangling. Sunset was drawing ever closer. Moonrise was coming. He had to secure himself.

He picked up his cloak awkwardly, bundling it to him. Numb fingers found his wand and wiped it against the front of his robes. He was shivering again, chilled to the marrow. From the knees to the fraying hems, his garments were soaked from kneeling in the snow. It took every ounce of his will to compel his body to rise, and Remus struggled up the hill to the crumbling rock wall that surrounded the cottage garden.

The cottage itself was small: it had once had four rooms, each opening on the other. Long ago, long before Remus had found it, the east wall had crumbled and brought down half the roof. What had once been a sitting room and place-of-all-work was now a cobbled yard, open to the air. The best part of the wall at this end of the house was only six feet high, its top jagged where stones had fallen away. Around the kitchen, the walls were in better shape. But the place where the ridgepole had broken jutted out halfway into the room – if you could still call it a room – and the ragged edge of the rafters raked the sky. The front door opened on the kitchen, or had when there had still been a door. Remus dragged himself across the threshold of the gaping posts and lintel, and his worn shoes scuffed against the flagstone floor.

He had cleared away the rubble when he had settled here, but he could not keep out the snow. It drifted in the corners and against the low stone laundry sink where he bathed in clement weather. There was a discoloured patch of floor, almost hidden by the white powder at the moment, where a wrought iron woodstove had once stood. It had been useless by the time Remus came here, damaged by a plank that had fallen from the jagged maw of the roof. He had brought it to a scrapyard in Hull, and fed himself off the proceeds for a month. It was tedious, preparing meals without a cooker, but he made do with magic and the hearth in the next room. He missed having an oven most of all: he could not bake bread.

He shuffled to the door that opened off of the kitchen. It was set in a load-bearing wall, and above him the jagged edge of the intact half of the roof offered some protection from the elements. Remus struggled to right his wand in his clumsy fingers and murmured the charm that released the wards on the door. This was, for all intents and purposes, the entrance to his house. The two uninhabitable rooms behind him were only an extension of the garden, a courtyard of sorts. Such a grand name for such a humble ruin.

He thought this room had once been a bedroom. It served him for a living space. Remus dragged himself inside and tugged the door closed behind him. It was a dingy chamber, the whitewash on the stone walls chipped and greying. He had one small carpet, worn through to the stone in the places his heels had dragged or rested so many times over the years. A rickety table, salvaged from the ruins of the kitchen and repaired with careful charmwork, stood against the wall. Two mismatched chairs were tucked under it, a pitiful little gesture of optimism for a man who had never had a guest in his ill-gotten home. Remus unloaded his arms onto the table, some of the beans spilling out of the hood and skittering across the timeworn wood.

He turned over the sack of oatmeal, blotting at the wet patch with a corner of his cloak. He had to dare a Drying Charm. He couldn't let it moulder. But he sat down first, crashing onto the nearest chair so that it groaned beneath him. He did not move right away, drinking in the relief of being once more in these familiar surroundings. Home at last, if home he could call it. The old guilt resurfaced, and he beat it back down. He wasn't taking anything anyone else would want, wasn't using anything they hadn't forgotten fifty years ago. He wasn't even trespassing: the Crown owned the land in the National Park, and it was meant for the use of the populace.

 _You've a right to put a roof over your head, Lupin: how you do it makes no difference to me._ Moody had said that, and in such a brisk, dismissive manner that he could have been speaking nothing but the truth. Remus would have to remember that, to lock it away for comfort when he was plagued by the knowledge that most of wizarding society would have nothing but contempt for a werewolf who squatted in a Muggle ruin. He hoped he _could_ remember it. The state he was in, he'd be lucky to remember anything from this dreadful day but the burning shame of it all.

He had sold his blood like an animal. He hadn't even been able to speak up for himself well enough to get the originally agreed-upon price. He had been moved to savagery instead of compassion in the moment he realised that the young werewolf wanted a share of his meal. And if he had been able to quash that first awful impulse, he had still failed to help the boy in any meaningful way. He hadn't offered him the money in his pocket. He hadn't even made sure the child had a safe place to transform tonight. And then – then he had lacked even the strength and the ability to get home without assistance. If not for Alastor Moody…

Remus shuddered. He cast the Drying Charm upon the sack of oats hastily, incautiously, relying on long practice and the fact that this was an absurdly simple spell – child's play, really, perfected in first year and never flubbed since – to carry him through. Reflex accomplished what studious focus might not have done. The dark patch on the burlap disappeared, and although Remus felt a fresh wave of dizziness he did not suffer too much for the exertion. He reached inside his robes and brought out the packet of tea. The money was behind it, still secure in his inner pocket. He laid it out. A small bundle of Muggle notes, a few Muggle coins, three gold Galleons, six Sickles and a handful of Knuts. All he had to show for abasing himself in Knockturn Alley.

Desperate for distraction from that thought, Remus picked up the little sack of teabags again, lifting it to his nose and drinking in the homey, familiar scent. He wouldn't have been able to stomach a cup of it now, but at least he could still relish the scent. That much of his humanity was left to him in this last hour before moonrise.

He thought he had about an hour, anyhow. He let himself lean back against the old chair, staring up at the roof. The rafters were whole and sturdy here. He took care to keep them that way, with regular applications of the spells to ward off dry rot and insects. The slate was in good shape on the south side of the roof, though on the north side it had been battered by decades of wuthering wind. There was one place about halfway up where several of them were gone, blown away in some long-ago gale. He had patched the hole with tarpaper, held in place with a Permanent Sticking Charm and a prayer. The charm still held. The other two were wearing thin.

Remus struggled to his feet, gripping the table for support. There was a Welsh dresser in one corner, also salvaged from the kitchen. It held his few dishes and served as his pantry. A tin pail stood on the work surface, its enamel chipped and its handle pocked with rust. The cottage had no running water – it never had, though there was a well of questionable quality and a hand pump over the laundry sink. Remus kept this pail filled for the times when he could not Conjure water with his wand. There was a thick film of ice under the cover, and he broke it with the bottom of his mug before scooping up a frigid measure. It made his teeth ache, but Remus drank greedily. The effort left him winded, and he leaned heavily against the dresser, resting his brow against the upper doors. The shelves within were empty, save for the remains of a pound of salt and a dwindling box of the baking soda that served him as toothpowder. He could have put away his frugal purchases, but the thought of that effort was exhausting.

When he had gathered himself as best he could, he moved to the narrow door opposite the entrance. Behind it was a tiny room, storeroom or child's bedroom he did not know. It was where he slept, anyhow. The fireplace was in the other room, but the roof was sturdiest here at the far end of the house. Like the larger room, this one was bitterly cold, not much warmer than the air outside. The small window looked out on the garden. Its glass had a hole in the bottom left corner, stuffed with rags and a snake of aluminium foil. The frame was rimmed in rime, and a thick hill of ice had built up along the bottom: condensation from many winter nights.

Remus stood in the doorway, half-stupid with fatigue and blood loss and the pull of the moon. His motheaten blankets sagged over the bare slats of the bed: the mattress he had Conjured three days ago had melted away at last, apparently. He was always dimly grateful when this happened while he was up and about, instead of in the middle of the night. He didn't have the strength to replace it now, and he wouldn't have the strength tomorrow morning, either. Well, he had slept on the bare frame before this. He'd manage.

He struggled with the loop in the cord that served him as a belt, loosening it with disobedient fingers. He stepped out of his shoes, knowing the strain was bad for the fraying laces but lacking the strength to stoop to untie them. He didn't have a wardrobe or a bureau, but there were half a dozen pegs behind the door. His other robes, in better repair but far too thin for winter wear, hung on one. He draped his makeshift belt over the next and fumbled with the fastenings of his garments.

It took a conscious act of courage to strip off his robes, baring scarred skin to the chill of the room. For a moment or two he stood shivering, arms and legs rough with gooseflesh. Then he hauled his ragged vest over his head and stepped out of his tattered underpants. The socks were last, and he noticed distantly that there was a fresh hole in the left one. More darning to do; the constant struggle to keep whole clothes on his back tired Remus even at the best of times.

His left arm was crusted with blood. The mark of the apothecary's fleam was dark in the centre of a glossy bruise. Remus tried to scrub away the trails of gore with his palm suddenly repulsed. Naked, he stumbled to the washstand in the corner. He had a cracked basin and a pitcher there, a ratty old towel and a small bar of the cheap glycerin soap that served him for everything – his skin, his hair, his clothes when they grew too ripe for charmwork to make much difference. He broke the layer of ice floating in the pitcher and poured out a little water. It was so cold that it seemed to burn him, but it rinsed away the blood.

He felt better after that, though it was not rational. In a couple of hours he would be tearing gaping wounds in his flesh. A little blood in the crease of his elbow could not hurt him.

It was time. He could delay no longer. He left his little bedroom, leaving the door open wide so that he would not have to grapple with it in the morning. In his sitting room he paused, leaning briefly against the back of his armchair. It was the best piece of furniture he owned, a twentieth birthday gift that showed the hard wear of the years only in its worn pile where his head and hands habitually rested. _Best quality: should last a lifetime,_ James had said proudly. _Somewhere comfy to sit while you read, Moony_ , said Peter. _I need somewhere to grab a bit of kip when I visit, don't I…_

Remus shut his mind to that voice, heart aching. Too many times today his mind had wandered that forbidden realm. It had to stop, or it would drive him mad.

He closed the door that led through to the roofless kitchen, but he did not lock it. It was colder out here after all, and he hugged his arms to the too-prominent ridges of his ribs, teeth chattering. There was nowhere in the root cellar for him to secure his clothing, and the wolf would go after them if it could: tearing at the lingering scent of humanity and reducing the cloth to rags. Remus could not afford to sacrifice even one garment in this way, so he stepped naked out into the garden and braced himself against the bite of the wind.

The heavy cover over the root cellar door was the sturdiest piece of woodwork on the property: solid oak, reinforced across the grain and bracketed with heavy iron braces. It was dark with a weatherproof varnish that Remus had been ill able to afford but had purchased anyhow, anxious to provide this barrier between his madness and a world full of innocents with every possible protection. He strained now to lift it, hauling on the heavy iron ring while the hinges protested. Inside, narrow and very steep stone steps disappeared into darkness.

He cast one last look at the sky, and then hastened to descend, relieved to get his bare feet out of the snow.

He worked without light, far too familiar with the process to need his eyes. First he let the heavy hatch fall, then climbed the first few stairs again to latch it with two stout iron pegs. One charm secured them. Another sealed the edges of the door to its frame. These efforts left Remus spent and gasping. He tried to cast the Silencing Charm that was more habit than necessity so far from any trappings of civilisation – there was not even a road leading up to this place, and the old cart-tracks had vanished to shadows on the moor long ago. His wand fizzled briefly, but would not respond. His strength was spent. There was no magic left in him now.

The bottom step had a trick panel in its riser, another of his early improvements. He slid down the steps without rising, like a small child scooting on his backside. His bare skin scraped the rough stone, scratched raw on crumbling edges. Remus was too far-gone to care. He groped for the panel, opened it, and stowed his wand inside. He closed it with care. Two opposable thumbs and parchment-thin fingernails were needed to prise off the cover. The wolf could not reach the wand, however it tried.

Then at last, at long last, Remus was able to sag down in a heap on the packed earthen floor. He drew his limbs in close to his body, huddled to conserve what meagre warmth was left to him. It was cold down here, too, but not nearly as cold as it had been in the open air or even in the cottage. The ground remembered something of the summer sun, and insulated this place against winter's worst ravages. That was something to be grateful for, surely. He had to cling to these little things, these tiny daily blessings, or he would drown in misery.

Curled on his side, quaking, his teeth chattering and his feet and fingers numb, Remus waited for the inexpressible anguish of the transformation. More, he waited for the blessed forgetfulness that came when he shed his human mind.


	5. Part Five

_Note: This is an on-the-fly post, and my backlog of review replies remains untouched. I'm very sorry. Life has been hard these last few weeks, and I appreciate your support and understanding. Thank you so much for your feedback: it keeps me going in dark times._

 _For those of you who are interested, in Chapter 5 of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Ollivander says to Harry: "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her FIRST wand." (Emphasis mine.)_

 **In Desperate Manner: Part Five**

Remus awoke to the twin miseries of throbbing anguish and bone-deep cold. He was shivering uncontrollably, which did his ravaged musculature no favours at all. Fiery, cramping pain rippled up his legs and along his ribs. He was lying splayed on his belly, his spine twisted awkwardly in the wake of the contortions of the brutal transformation. When he tried to straighten himself, one bare foot scraping against the hard-packed earthen floor, he could scarcely find the strength to bend his knee, much less actually roll onto his side. He sank back, stealing shallow breaths to avoid straining his abused ribs. He did not feel the sharp, grating pain that meant they were broken, but the cartilage between and the broad bands of muscle that bound them ached perniciously. He knew they would trouble him for days.

It was impossible to take proper stock of his injuries while he lay still. Remus's head pulsed with the heavy patter of his heart, and his thirst was a torment, but these were standard fare after even the most merciful transformations. To gauge the extent of the damage, he would have to find the strength to move. Yet still he lay motionless, unwilling to brave the hidden pains as he sorted through muddled memories of the afternoon before.

Apparating home against all reason from the little bridge over the River Ure. An illegal Portkey – had he dared to create an illegal Portkey? The penalty for that, as for most crimes great and small, was more severe for a part-human than for a witch or wizard. But no, Alastor Moody had created the Portkey in the middle of Gringotts Bank, without warning. _Quiet, boy, don't make a scene_ … Moody, who had found him huddled on the broad marble steps before the bank because he could walk no farther for fear of fainting.

All the rest of it came back in a rush: choosing the packet of cheap tea in the grocer's, devouring every last morsel of the half-pound of stew meat left to him after he gave half to the ragged young werewolf in the butcher's alley, standing before the display case and asking for the very cheapest cut of red meat available. He remembered coming to on the pavement of Knockturn Alley, weak with loss of blood and soaked with gutter water. He remembered sitting at the counter in the dingy apothecary shop, watching his blood drain into the basin. He remembered everything.

And he wished, for one terrible moment, that he were the wolf again, just so that he would neither have to remember, nor face what came next.

Legs first, he told himself, trying to find some comfort in long routine and failing utterly. He knew is left leg was not broken at least, for he had been able to move the foot. He moved it again now, first rolling the ankle and then forcing the knee to bend, drawing it up towards his hip. It dragged in the dirt, several shallow wounds stinging. There was no undue anguish, no sudden starburst of pain to blind him in the perfect darkness of his prison-sancutary, no telltale pulling of the flesh where it had been ripped too deep. His hip ground miserably with the exertion, but that, too, was only to be expected. His joints bore the strain of the change with a little less grace every month. Some day, quite likely long before his time, he would find himself permanently crippled with arthritis, with rheumatism, with whatever you wanted to call it. Something to look forward to, he supposed: at least if the wolf was similarly afflicted, it would be slowed in its monthly rampage.

Tentatively and not without an enormous effort, Remus pushed off with his left foreleg – no, his shin, he reminded himself. On a man it was a shin. He shifted the weight of his lower body onto his right hip so that his leg could slip up under the left. He pushed with his toes, pressing the lone advantage of the unfinished floor and using its traction to propel the mammoth weight of his thin leg. He did feel the drag of torn flesh this time, nauseating and unmistakable, but the accompanying burst of fresh pain was brilliant and shallow – not the deeper, blunted agony of a wound that gnawed far into the muscle. It was surely bleeding copiously, but not critically. That was a mercy.

Now both legs were curled to one side, drawn not quite high enough to conserve his fading body heat. The mere fact that he had been able to accomplish such motion without courting unconsciousness was as sign that he had done no serious harm to his pelvis or lower abdomen. The arms were next. His left was splayed out over his head, providing a bony tent of shelter that reflected his hot, moist breath back into his face. As soon as he drew it in, tucking his elbow to his side and dragging his hand to the hollow of his collarbone, his cheek was blasted with a wall of cold that made him draw a sharp, painful breath.

He leaned into the shock, rocking his weight onto his flexed wrist and struggling to roll onto his knees. It was an inelegant motion, but in this cavernous blackness there was no one to see. Remus huddled low to the ground as he struggled onto all fours: knees, palm and elbow. Then he moved to get his right hand under him, and collapsed in sudden, all-consuming anguish as, with a grinding of broken bones, his wrist gave out from under him and he crashed to earth, brow and shoulder first.

 _Fool_! his mind cried as explosions of varicoloured light burst behind his eyes and his whole body shuddered with the anguish of the disturbed fracture. _Fool, fool, mad and arrogant fool_. He had not checked his arm before testing his weight upon it. Something was broken, something in or quite near the wrist, and the pain of it was almost indescribable.

He might have lost consciousness briefly, or else merely trodden the edge of the abyss, for when he came back to himself he was colder than ever and his teeth felt brittle from chattering. His wand. He had to get to his wand, but he had lost all sense of direction in the eyeless blackness and he did not know where the stairs might lie.

It didn't matter. He might languish here forever without gaining any better insight into the problem. It was best to simply make straight for the wall and work his way around the perimeter. The root cellar was not large: perhaps eight feet long and seven wide. A methodical search was exhausting, but Remus knew he had to do it. There was no use in languishing where he was, bleeding away what little strength he had through wounds that, while perhaps not immediately deadly, would still not clot or close properly without help. In the early months, when he had grappled with the fresh horrors of transforming alone after years of companionship, he had let matters rest too long on more than one occasion. Perhaps it had been despair, perhaps he had clung to the irrational hope that someone would show up to collect him, to help him. But no one ever did, and the delay left him far worse off than any exertion would have done. After one particularly brutal change when hesitation had nearly proved fatal, Remus had learned that he had to fight through the fatigue and the agony and the merciless wall of apathy to extricate himself as quickly as possible.

So he struggled back onto hand and knees, tucking his right arm close against the washboard of his ribs. The bones ground again, not shy about making their state known, and he fought the urge to vomit at the sickening feel of it. Unsteadily, desperately, he began to crawl.

The wall was not far away: the crown of his head hit it with a _clunk_ after only three trembling pushes of his legs. He turned, grazing his shoulder against it, and crept along, feeling the fine rain of loose soil trickle down his arm as he went. With the myriad pains both within and without, it was remarkable that his brain could even keep track of the gritty feeling of the wall against his shoulder. He tried to focus on that, sheltering his mind from the post-transformation anguish and the grim knowledge of the struggles to come.

He found the stairs at last, just when he was beginning to fear he might have turned in the wrong direction and condemned himself to circumnavigate the entire room. Remus sank to his elbow, huddled low over his throbbing knees, and groped for the panel that concealed his wand. There was a fresh scratch in the cover, a raking claw-mark where the wolf had tried to dig after the scent of the man where it lingered most enticingly. But the wolf could not penetrate this little stronghold: Remus was as certain of that as he was of anything in his increasingly uncertain life.

He found the grooves that worked the trick latch. His right hand was useless, the fingers unable to obey him despite the dear ransom of agony when he tried to make them move. So he took his right thumb between his left thumb and forefinger, and positioned it where it had to go. His nail, ragged and worn down from the wolf's mad scrabbling, caught on the groove and kept the thumb in place. He positioned his other hand, and his arm trembled clear up into the shoulder with the effort of working the mechanism. For an awful moment he thought that he could not manage it, but then the latch gave and the panel fell away. Frantically he scrabbled in the hollowed-out stone, fingers closing around the familiar, glass-smooth handle of his wand.

It was the same wand he had used all his life, the one that had chosen him at the age of eleven when he stood, frightened and wonderstruck, in Mr Ollivander's shop. Not every wizard was fortunate enough to make it so far into life – and a hard, often violent life, at that – with his original wand. Remus remembered Lily's hurt and indignation when her own had been broken, a casualty of a battle from which the four of them had been lucky to escape otherwise unscathed. It had taken her weeks to adjust to the new one, even meticulously matched as it had been. Neither she nor James had batted an eyelash at the price, but Remus (whose own wand, like that of every first-time buyer enrolled at Hogwarts, had been provided for a nominal fee under the Ministry's subsidy programme) had felt sick at the outpouring of Galleons and wretchedly, selfishly grateful that it had been Lily's wand, not his own, that had needed to be replaced.

His fingers fumbled, his left hand unused to holding the slender cypress stave. He did not know if he was strong enough to cast a spell; he had a vague memory of proving incapable of setting the Silencing Charm on the cellar door. But he had no choice, really. He gathered his wits and the ragged remnants of his strength.

' _F-Ferula_ ,' he whispered. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat, which burned with thirst and the rawness of a night's crazed howling. ' _Ferula_!' he repeated, so forcefully that his voice rang painfully in his sensitive ears.

He felt the crawling grind of bone on bone, and the sudden cinching coil of Conjured bandages as his wrist was affixed in a splint. He did not cry out, far too used to such pains to be overcome by them even now, but the effort left him cold and gasping, icy perspiration trickling into his eyes and stinging there. But the pain in his wrist was blunted to a forgetful throbbing, and the broken bones were strapped in place. He did not know how long the dressing would last: that would depend on the quality of the casting, and in his current state he did not have much faith in that. He did not know when he might dare to mend the bones themselves, but certainly not without a proper sleep behind him.

Next, Remus had to tackle the stairs. As he crept up, his hip scraping the crumbling edges, he knew he ought to be grateful that he was not dragging a broken leg instead of an arm. When the crown of his head grazed the underside of the heavy oaken door he stopped, huddled at the top of the stairs, and gathered his resolve before breaking the enchantments he had managed to cast upon it.

Undoing a spell was easier than performing a fresh one, at least when one was the original caster. The wards that held the door to its frame and locked the iron latches in place let go readily enough. Remus tucked his wand into the crook of his broken arm, squeezing it securely against his flank as he inched up one more step. He bowed his head and eased his shoulder up against the door. It shuddered, giving a little against the pressure, and he adjusted his legs clumsily beneath him. There wasn't much strength in them – he hadn't expected much, malnourished as he was. When he tried to stand, pushing the cover off the cellar entrance, his knees buckled and he crashed down on the stairs, scraping his hip and the side of his left thigh.

Choking on a strangled sound of frustration and fear, Remus forced himself to try again before doubt could overwhelm him. His bare feet scrabbled, toes gripping the stone steps, and the breadth of his shoulder-blades smacked dully against the underside of the door. There was an endless instant of limbo, when he was pushing upward with all his tenuous strength and yet the heavy, reinforced panel was not moving, and then it gave way with a squeak of cold hinges and a groan of wet wood and Remus's skull exploded in brilliant white anguish as the light of the morning poured over him.

Instinct wanted to shrink away, but will and desperation were stronger. He knew he would not find the strength to open the door again, and so he kept pushing, straightening up until the planks reached their tipping-point and fell away from him, landing with a damp _thump_ on the earth. Remus's knees gave way then, and he crumpled, losing two steps and grating his left elbow raw as he crumpled onto the stairway. Unable to stop the whimper of misery, he curled in on himself against the blasting wall of frosty cold that came wafting in with the wind off the moors.

He fumbled at his right elbow, desperate to find his wand. If it had fallen when he did, he wasn't sure he could find the strength to drag himself back down into the cellar to retrieve it, much less out again. But no: it was there, trapped between his arm and his torso. His fingers grazed a fresh wound, a crescent of torn punctures slick with blood. It was painful but blessedly shallow. Perhaps the wolf, exhausted from the day's exertions and satiated at least in part by the hard-won stew meat, had not ravaged itself too violently after all.

The cold was unbearable. Remus could not linger here. His eyes were still screwed tightly against the light, which was far brighter than he had expected. Yesterday the clouds had been thick and heavy, low upon the land. It seemed that was not the case today. It explained the awful, searing chill of the air, too: clear days were always the coldest.

Trembling, all too aware of his nakedness and of the dozen long yards that lay between his transforming-place and the back door of the roofless kitchen, Remus groped for the lip of the cellar hole. His fingers gripped the wood, and he hauled upon it, forcing his feet to obey him as he slid up the steps one at a time. When at last Remus's hip crested the edge, he kicked feebly to gain the last couple of inches. His arm gave out beneath him and he landed on his side, shoulder and flank in the wet snow, legs hanging over the abyss of the cellar behind him. His skin burned with the cold, gooseflesh rising over the old scars and aggravating the edges of new wounds. His breath caught in his throat. Exhaustion like a cresting wave broke over him, threatening to drag him into the undertow of blessed unconsciousness.

He could not give in. Remus clung to his will like a drowning man, somehow rolling onto his hip and dragging himself the rest of the way out of the gaping trap door. He had no strength to spare in doubling back to close it: he would just have to leave his hiding-place open to the air until he was well enough to come out again to tidy up and close it. If the weather proved unforgiving, he would have a considerable mess to put right, but that was simply a risk he would have to take.

He had his legs under him now, shins in the snow and lean thighs providing some meagre warmth to the sensitive flesh of his groin and lower abdomen. The urge to huddle like that, gathered in a ball, until he found a little warmth within himself was terrible – and completely irrational. Remus could feel the fever-heat rising off his body in waves, lost to the winter air. He did not know if the day was half as cold as it felt, but even if it wasn't he knew that hypothermia could easily sneak up on a man, particularly one in such a state. He had to get inside, to the shelter of the solid stone walls and the sturdy half of the roof. He had to get something wrapped around his body. He had to try to light a fire, or cast a Warming Charm. He had to find some way to keep from freezing.

Somehow he dragged himself to his feet, hunched low and curled in upon himself but more or less upright. He swayed there, his left hand now cupped under his right elbow, and blinked blearily against the merciless sunlight. The sun itself was small and distant, pale in the watery sky and not yet three fingers above the horizon. He had not languished long in his pit, then. That was good. The less time he had lost, the less blood he had lost. Remus looked down at his pale, cold-puckered body, taking in the smears of scarlet and the darker, raking wounds. Not so bad this time, he thought dazedly. The meat had done its work, and placated the wolf at least a little.

He managed four trembling steps towards the cottage before he crashed to his knees, his legs too weak to carry him farther.

 _discidium_

The bare flagstones seemed to burn more cruelly than the snow, but somehow they were easier on Remus's pride. Crawling through the mucky drifts like an animal, naked to the open sky, he had found it very difficult to cling to any hope of relief. Here, in the kitchen-courtyard, he had at least the illusion of civility. It was absurd, of course: there was no one for miles to wander by and see him in such a state, and he was no less savage now. Yet he felt intangibly safer, more human, with the stone wall at his back and the door to his living space only a few yards away.

His palm and his shins slid slickly on the floor, lubricated with blood and mud and snowmelt. Remus had to brace himself swiftly and jarringly when his arm very nearly shot out from under him. The impact into his shoulder and ribs, and the sudden tensing of every strained and overtaxed muscle in his quaking body, brought a fresh, horrible burst of pain, but at least he did not crash down against the unyielding floor. He paused there, panting, his head hanging low between curled shoulders. Something hot and wet was trickling down his cheeks. Tears of exhaustion and frustration, he realized slowly: his body yielding to a wretchedness his mind could not entertain. With a shudder that wracked his thin frame, he shifted his weight forward again and resumed his pilgrimage.

Afterwards, he could never remember how he managed to straighten himself enough to reach the doorknob, much less actually turn it. His left palm was raw and stinging, slick with blood and ingrained grit. That sensation always filled him with a crippling terror that he could not understand, and he tried fruitlessly to wipe his hand clean on his thigh. But he was over the threshold now, kicking the door closed behind him. It did not quite latch, but it caught in the frame and shut out all but a sliver of the frosty morning without. Good enough.

Remus could go no further, not now. The relief of being once more in this familiar space, civilised despite its shabbiness, overwhelmed him. He eased himself down onto his side, curling in upon himself and letting the tremors he had fought so desperately overcome him. The room was shadowy, its dimness a boon to throbbing eyes. The curtains were cheap and unlovely: a paisley chintz that had been fashionably ubiquitous in the days when his father had been obliged to furnish a two-room flat as inexpensively as possible. The familiar pattern seemed seared on the back of Remus's eyelids now as he lay, quietly throbbing, midway between the door and the dish dresser.

Something spongy and textured lay under his temple, a ridge rising from the stone floor. The threadbare rug. A sudden, frantic burst of fevered energy seized Remus, and he scrabbled forward, onto the small square of carpet. It provided a meagre buffer from the chill of the stone, but in that moment it seemed soft and welcoming as a bed. Remus drew his legs in near again, hugging his broken wrist and his precious wand close to his body, and he let himself rest a little, at last.

He could not lie there forever, though. This part of the cottage was sheltered but still very cold, and he was naked. His bed was in the next room: the shelter of his blankets, the cover of his dressing gown. Why hadn't he brought the garment out here, to await his return? Dimly he remembered his addled state in the last hour before moonrise, and he supposed he would have to forgive himself that lapse in judgement.

Remus struggled to his knees again, fighting the pain with a last reserve of strength that would not last him long. His armchair was within arm's reach, and he shuffled a little nearer so that he could use the sturdy piece of furniture to lever himself up off the floor. A sharp, tearing pain rippled into his hip as he rose, strained muscles releasing pent-up tension. He adjusted his grip from the arm of the chair to its high, winged back, and forced swimming eyes to focus on the door to the tiny back bedroom. It stood ajar, as he had left it. At least he'd had enough sense to do that.

Like a polio victim taking his first steps after the crisis, Remus launched himself for the doorpost. He was losing his balance almost before he found it, and the two stumbling steps he managed were nothing more than a controlled fall forward. It was enough. He caught hold of the doorpost and dragged it to himself, socking his shoulder against it and clinging to it one-handed while his boneless feet and his quivering knees struggled to brace him against it. He leaned in with his hip as he reached for the door-handle, and hauled himself into the room.

He had to lean against the wall with his right side as his left hand struggled to lift his dressing gown from its peg. Like every other garment he owned, it showed the wear of the years: faded, its nap all but bald, its elbows patched with mismatched scraps. It was spattered with old bloodstains, its hem and collar frayed. But it was soft as lambswool after a decade of washings, and as he slung it over his shoulder Remus thought he had never been so grateful to cover his nakedness. The promise of warmth it brought soothed his terror and drove back just a little farther the terror of freezing to death.

He had to grip the edge of the dressing gown with the fingers of his right hand so that he could get his left arm into the sleeve. He had cast the spell properly, if perhaps not perfectly: the support of the splint allowed him to work his fingers well enough for the task. He did not dare to move his arm away from his body to don the right sleeve, and so he simply draped the garment over that shoulder, tugging it closed with his good hand. He huddled into his dressing gown, already feeling his body heat gathering in the folds of the cloth. He drew the front closed, not able to find the strength to grapple with the dangling sash, and nuzzled the turned-back collar with the side of his aching jaw. The clatter of his teeth, constant almost since waking, slowed and then stopped.

At last, at long last, Remus turned towards his bed. The blankets lay limp over the bare slats, and he was taken by a moment of shocked dismay: the Conjured mattress was gone, melted away when most he had need of it. Then he remembered that he had seen this the night before, had known to expect it. Conjuring another now was out of the question: he would simply have to make do.

He stumbled as he moved to the bed, catching himself against the scratched footboard. With a hand that shook with insidious exhaustion, he drew back the first two blankets, leaving the third against the boards. He could gladly have burrowed under half a dozen, but he needed something beneath him to keep out the draught. He tried to ease himself down onto the bed, but his strained muscles were too far gone for such careful control. He overbalanced and fell, tumbling or rolling, he knew not which. The bed groaned beneath him, but it held. His dressing gown was tangled about his calves, but he did not care: that kept it close, at least, and he managed to wrap his feet in the corner of the uppermost blankets. They were chilled, and he was shivering, but his body would warm them. There was that much to be said for the transformation fever, at least.

Distantly he reflected that he ought to dig out his wand where it lay nestled between arm and ribs. He ought to try to summon up some flames to burn on the floor by the bed, or to Warm his bedclothes. But the struggle simply to reach this haven of motheaten wool and solid walls had sapped Remus of all his strength. He was trembling with cold and utter enervation, and he could not find the will to move even one finger more. Curled on his side on the bare, narrow bedframe, he let himself slip away at last into a deep, pain-drugged slumber.


End file.
